like sweet vanilla
by jjajangmyeon
Summary: "So either you're Spider-Man, and you're going to tell me why the hell you're in my room," she started, as she was approaching him with a glare "or you're a creep and I'm going to throw this, and you, out the window and cal—"; Peter seriously needs to rest more if he wants his secret identity to stay secret. Peter Parker/OC
1. falling

He was exhausted.

The city seemed to be quieter lately, his days filled with more old ladies needing directions rather than bank robberies or muggings. The quiet in the city wasn't equating to any calm in his life though. School was ramping up, May was getting more paranoid (and stricter), and it was becoming more difficult to maintain all the relationships in his life. On top of that, he'd had the great idea that he should do some _actual_ work at his "Stark Internship."

It wasn't going to bring him down, because even if life was trying its best to hand his ass to him, he was still putting up a pretty damn good fight. His situation at the moment, however, was that of a teenage boy running off of four hours of sleep, a full day at school, an evening at his internship, and four hours of patrolling.

Thus, the current exhaustion. And the relief that swept through his body when he realized he'd actually managed to get himself to his apartment without passing out mid-swing.

He slipped the window of his room open, and perched himself on it, facing his sleepy neighborhood. He closed his eyes, pushed his mask up the slightest amount, and let the cold air rush over him with the hopes that it would help wake him up a bit. It was already 2 in the morning, and he still needed to finish his Physics assignment that was due in less than seven hours.

"I… think you've got the wrong room?" Called out a tentative voice from behind him.

Peter froze before shoving his mask down and turning his upper body so quickly that he almost fell on the bed behind him. He didn't even need to scan the room for a second to see that it definitely was not his room.

Instead of his bunk bed, a single twin bed was sitting below him. The only light in the room was coming from haphazardly arranged string lights that ran all over. All of the walls were covered in posters and photos, and one photo by the door even happened to have him in it. In fact, not only was this not _his_ room, he _knows_ this room even though he hasn't stepped foot in it for years now.

 _Of course, of all the windows I could open by mistake, the one that I had to choose belongs to someone that actually knows me!_

Sitting at the desk across the room was his neighbor. Not just a neighbor, but Emmeline, the daughter of May's coworker. And not just Emmeline, the daughter of May's coworker, but, Emmy, someone he used to play with when he was younger and still sees around regularly. _My freaking luck!_

"Well, I don't have my glasses on, but I'm pretty sure you're wearing a red-and-blue unitard..." She was looking at him through squinted, and slightly unfocused eyes, while reaching around for something under her desk. Peter could see that her face was marked with indentations from the spirals of her notebook in front of her. _Okay, she seems pretty out of it, maybe I can just hop ba—_

Peter startled at the sight in front of him, because Emmy was now holding the handle of an instrument case and positioned ready to swing at him. "So either you're Spider-Man, and you're going to tell me why the hell you're in my room," she started, as she was approaching him with a glare "or you're a creep and I'm going to throw this, _and_ you, out the window and cal—"

He caught her arm mid-swing, and would have been looking at her with wide-eyes if he didn't have the mask on. _How can she even reach this far over the bed? She's barely over five feet tall!_ Despite happening to have superpowers, even Peter didn't feel like falling from a building at 2 in the morning. Karen was saying something to him, but he wasn't processing it. All he could hear was the blood rushing through his body, his heart pumping faster and faster.

 ** _Peter you don't_ **—"I'm Spider-Man!" He squeaked out. **_—have the voice modifier on_ **_._

 _Shit! Why why why why?! This is not happening._

Emmy was squinting at him even harder now. She moved to kneel on the bed completely and grabbed his jaw, using her hand that was still holding her instrument, with a force that probably would have had anyone else falling into the room.

"That voice. You sound really familiar…" Emmy shoved her face closer to him, looking at him so intently that he wouldn't be surprised if she could will his mask away with her stare. He'd forgotten over time how scary she could be. **_I'll go ahead and switch the modifier on for you, it doesn't look like you're getting out of this easily._**

"Oh really?" Peter said, relaxing slightly as he heard his now modified voice come out. "Probably just a coincidence."

"Hmm…" Emmy was still looking at him like she was looking through him, but she dropped her hand off his face and shifted backwards. "Whatever, I guess. You still haven't explained why you're here in my room though."

"You see— well, I was… I was… investigating! I'm looking for… something. Yes, I'm just looking for something and um. Well, it's a classified… operation?" Emmy did not look impressed at all. "And I just, I got your room— I ended up in your room on accident! Did you know they don't put numbers on the outside of apartment buildings?" _Great going Peter, if your voice didn't give you away, then your rambling freaking did!_

Emmy didn't respond. She was just staring at him again, the squinted glare making its way back onto her face.

 _God, this isn't going to get any better. I just need to get out of here._ "I'm sorry for waking you up and scaring you, I'll get out of your hair now and find, uhh, the thing I'm supposed to investigate!"

Peter gave her a small wave and quickly made his way out of the room. He decided against going straight to his room after looking back mid-swing and seeing Emmy peeking out her window. He ended up going around the neighborhood for another half-hour before making it back to his building (this time, making sure he was entering the right room first).

* * *

After taking a quick shower, he threw himself face-first onto his bed to recharge for a bit before tackling his homework. Feeling his phone vibrate somewhere on his bed, he reached around lazily, trying to find the phone without opening his eyes or moving more than his arm. _It's probably just Ned talking about whatever show he's bingeing on Netflix anyway._

Finally finding his phone, he rolled onto his back and pulled it up to his face, blearily looking at the preview of the message on his lock screen, before dropping it immediately _onto_ his face. _I'm just really tired. I'm sure that's not what I saw._

Peter sat up and rubbed at his eyes before picking his phone back up and opening the full message before really looking at it.

"Fuck. My. Life."

* * *

 **Emmy Cruz (2:54AM):** Good night Peter! (: I hope you made it into the right room and found whatever that "something," was!

* * *

 **a/n:** title and chapter title comes from 'sweety,' by gfriend (여자친구), which I listened to while writing this. this fic is also cross-posted on ao3


	2. let me focus, click

그대로 멈춰줘 잠깐  
초점을 맞춰서 찰칵

stop right there  
let me focus, click

-wjsn (우주소녀)

* * *

"Dude, what's up with you?" Ned asked, as he approached Peter, who was sitting alone at one of the outdoor lunch tables, practically sinking his face into his mashed potatoes. "Did you not finish the Physics homework?"

Peter groaned, but still didn't lift his head up. "No, I did…"

"What's wrong then? Is it another class? Your internship? _Oh,_ your _internship_?" He said, making quotation marks with his fingers and winking. Peter glared in response. "No? Well, what else could it be? Oh my god, did they announce another live-action anime movie? I swear they better not touch—-"

Peter let Ned keep on talking to himself, getting lost in his own thoughts. The morning wasn't kind to him. He didn't finish his homework until 5 in the morning, and even though class didn't start until 8, May gets up at 6 to get ready for work. He was only half-asleep for thirty minutes before he heard May start the shower. Not able to get himself to go back to sleep, Peter just ended up going into the kitchen and eating basically a whole box of cereal. He was essentially on autopilot until he remembered what happened just hours ago. " _Good night Peter! (:"_

Ever since then, he's just been silently freaking out and mopey. _How did I let this happen? How could I have been so careless? I hope Emmy isn't going to say anything… Not that she would… Right? I mean what could she get out of this? She probably won't do anything. Or wil—_

 _"—_ eter. Peter. Peter!" His reverie was broken as Ned punctuated the last call of his name with a slap to the back of his neck that would have sent him into his food if it weren't for his amplified reflexes.

"Wha- What?"

"You weren't listening to me!" Ned whined, "I've been talking to you for almost ten minutes!"

"Oh…" Peter scratched the back of his head, as a blush crept up his cheeks. "Sorry about that. Just a little preoccupied I guess."

"That's exactly what I've been asking you about!" Crossing his arms, he added, "Now that you're finally present in this dimension, what's bothering you?"

"Well, it's kind of hard to really talk about right now _,"_ Peter paused for a moment before sighing. He pulled his backpack closer to him and started to dig around for his phone. "Actually, you can probably get this gist of what's wrong by looking at this. Open the third conversation." Handing his phone over to Ned, who knew the lock code, he stared at him for a few seconds before sighing again and putting his head back down.

A minute or so passed before Ned put the phone down on the table and Peter saw it slide into his view. He grabbed it and slipped it back into his bag, before shifting his gaze back to Ned.

"So."

"Yeah?"

"So… That's not good." Ned stated, with a strangely blank face.

"It really isn—" Peter started, but quieted quickly as Ned's next statement came out.

"But I'm not surprised."

"You're… not?" Peter cried out, almost incredulously. "Why not?"

"Dude, you're almost dead on your feet. And you've been like this for months! You made it almost impossible for you _not_ to slip up!"

"But—"

"What'd you even do specifically? Actually, you know, it doesn't even matter. You picked the perfect person to slip in front of. The one person you've known the longest aside from May."

"I know, but—"

" _And_ she's your neighbor. Your _next-door_ neighbor. Your apartments literally share a fire escape!"

"God, I know—"

"Would you really expect any less from her? I mean, I know you were never best friends or anything, but she's been to all of your birthday parties!"

"Ned—"

" _I_ didn't even go to all your parties, like last year's. I'm sorry dude, but that J-pop thing was happening in Manhattan, and you know it's so hard to get all their CDs and stuff—"

"Ned! I get it! It's fine that you missed my birthday last year," Peter huffed, relieved to finally get a word in. "What should I do about this though?"

"What should you do about what? Emmy? Or everything? Because Emmy, well, that's easy. Just talk to her. And fact that you have to worry about this in the first place?" Ned looked at him pointedly. "Take a break. Cut back on patrol hours. Internship hours. Get some sleep!"

Peter tried to fight the blush that was crawling up his face again. He knew that this was brought on by himself, that it wouldn't have happened if he wasn't as burnt out. He sighed, "You're right, Ned. I'll try to talk to her when I get home later. And I'm not going to patrol tonight, so are you still going to come over? We've been planning that movie night for today for a while now!"

"Of course I'm still going! Especially if you're going to talk to Emmy, I want to see this go down. My little sis always knew how to scare the wits out of you."

"...maybe you shouldn't come over anymore," Peter muttered under his breath. "Wait, how is she your 'little' sis? We're all the same age!"

"Maybe we're like Irish twins."

"She's only two months younger than you."

"Whatever Peter! You should know all Filipinos are siblings by now!" Ned exclaimed, getting Peter to crack a smile. He remembers the first meeting between Ned and Emmy clearly, as they spent hours lamenting the neverending stream of Filipino soap operas on their TVs. "And don't think you're getting out of explaining to me how everything went down Peter, we still have five minutes 'til the bell!"

"Well…"

* * *

The rest of the school day was a breeze after that conversation with Ned. Peter resigned himself to the fact that a conversation with Emmy was inevitable, and there was no point in worrying so much about it anymore (though, he couldn't stop the worries completely). He met up with Ned by his locker after the final bell, and they both made their way towards Mr. Harrington's classroom for decathlon practice. The antics of the members were enough to keep him distracted, especially when MJ and Cindy teamed up for (another… quite frequent… and deserved) attack on Flash's ego.

As the practice came to an end, he was feeling better than he had in a while, imagining a weekend where he could possibly just laze around and sleep. Together with Ned and a few other members of the team, he started towards the subway to make his trek home. While they spent the walk to the station joking and planning their upcoming competition, once they got onto the actual subway car, packed with people ending their work day, they all fell into a quiet. Mostly because they were all standing apart from each other and were being squished by the crowd. The buzz of movement lulled him into a daze, and another wave of fatigue, so strong he almost didn't register the vibration of his phone in his hand. Shaking off the sleep he was about to fall in, he brought the phone up to his face.

 **May Parker (5:07PM):** On the way home. Do you want me to grab anything specific for dinner?

 **Peter Parker (5:09PM):** Maybe Thai? And Ned is coming over

 **May Parker (5:10PM):** Got it. 'll see you soon!

As that last text came, Peter noticed he was already near his stop. With a quick goodbye to the only other debate member left, Abe, he and Ned made their way towards his apartment in a comfortable silence. It was still Autumn, but the cold weather seemed to be settling into the city quite early, so most people on the streets weren't really lingering and were mostly rushing to their destinations to escape the harsh breezes that occasionally passed by. Eager to get indoors, he and Ned both let out relieved sighs as they approached the entrance to his apartment building.

Not so relieving, however, was the fact that the elevator in the building was (once again) out of order, and they had to climb up the stairs to his apartment, which was on the fourth floor. They probably resembled sloths as they pulled themselves up the stairs, one of the elderly ladies that lived in the building even gave an amused laugh as they passed by her on her way down. Once they stepped foot into the apartment, they immediately beelined towards the space near the tv and flopped onto the two couches.

Realizing that he hadn't seen May yet, Peter called out a "Aunt May?" that was muffled by the cushions on the couch. When he didn't get a response, he pulled out his phone to see if he'd missed a message from her.

 **May Parker (5:11PM):** *We'll

Puzzled, Peter quietly murmured "We'll?"

"Hmm?" Ned replied, not lifting his face from the couch he was on.

"May texted. She said 'we'll see you soon…' Who is she with?"

Ned sat up and looked at him with a quirked eyebrow. "Huh. No idea." As soon as he got those words out though, they heard keys turning in the door behind them.

Glancing back as the door opened, they saw May enter holding a takeout bag in one hand and her keys and purse in the other.

"Hey boys! You made it here first! I hope you weren't waiting too long."

"Nah," Peter said, while standing up off the couch. "We just got home a few minutes ago."

"Good! I got Thai like you asked. Larb, red curry, papaya salad, pad thai. You know, the works."

"Sounds delicious!" Ned called out, while getting up from the couch he was on.

"Great, glad to hear it!" May said with a smile, still by the door trying to kick off her shoes. "Do you boys mind giving us some help? I don't think I'm going to be able to get my shoes off while holding all this."

"Sure, sure." Peter chuckled, as May gave a sheepish laugh at her struggle. "Where's the person you're with anyway? And who is it?"

"Oh, did I not text you about that? And she'll be here in a sec, she was just checking the mail downs—"

"I'm here!" Before May could finish, they heard a cry from down the hall. "Sorry I took so long, I had to call my mom and see if she was expecting one of the letters we got today."

Appearing at the doorway, holding another takeout bag in one hand, instrument case in the other, and cheeks flushed from the run up the stairs, was the subject of his worries the whole day.

Emmy looked at him, and with a dimpled-smile called out. "Hey Peter!"

* * *

 **a/n:** "la la love," by wjsn (우주소녀) is what I listened to while writing this chapter


	3. my feet stopped at one

관심도 없던 꽃가게에서  
발길이 멈춰져요

I was never interested in flower shops,  
but my feet stopped at one

-red velvet

* * *

 _Emmy looked at him, and with a dimpled-smile called out. "Hey Peter!"_

For a split-second, Peter was paralyzed with shock. Even though he knew that he was going to have to talk to her eventually, he wasn't expecting it to be so soon. The " _Incident,"_ which is what he'd taken to calling it in his head, had happened less than 24-hours ago. He blinked, mentally trying to shake off the nerves, and gave her back an awkward smile.

"Hello Emmy," He said softly. "Uh, do you need any help with those?" Peter gestured towards the bags she was carrying with his free hand, the other hand holding the bag of takeout May was holding earlier.

"Sure, thanks!" She said, relief flashing on her face as she held out the food for him to take. "Instead of dropping off my stuff back home, I'll just bring my stuff in for now, if that's okay?"

"That's fine, sweety," May assured her, as she walked towards her room. "Peter, can you start setting up the table? I'm just going to change out of my scrubs."

"Alright, Aunt May." Peter replied, looking at Emmy who was still holding her instrument case and looked like a marshmallow, with the way she was bundled up for the cold.

Emmy waved him towards the table. "Go on, I'll be fine!"

"Yeah, you can go ahead Peter. I'll help her," Ned, who had at some point walked towards the doorway, gave a thumbs up to Peter and turned it towards Emmy. Peter hesitated, but eventually started towards the table to put the food down. "Hey Emmy! I haven't seen you in awhile. Let me get your stuff so you can take off your shoes… and jacket… and scarf… and—"

Emmy laughed, while handing him her instrument case. "I get cold easily, okay!" She slipped her backpack off her shoulders and handed it to Ned as well. "Thanks, Ned."

"No problem," he replied, while moving to place her belongings on the side of the couch by his own backpack. "So why are you here anyway?"

Peter was going into the kitchen to get out some plates and utensils, but paid close attention to their conversation since Ned had asked what he wanted to know. _Maybe she just wanted to torture me or something…_

"Ah, well. You know how my mom and May work at the same hospital?" Peter could hear Ned murmur an affirmative, and some shuffling as they moved around the room. "They got my mom to work a double, since someone called in and she never says no to them." From her tone, Peter could almost hear the eye roll and the disbelief that most likely accompanied that statement. "But she didn't want me to have to head home alone…" _Oh. Okay. Now I feel totally horrible for thinking that she wanted to torture me. Well._

"So she asked May to pick me up from band practice," At this point, he heard May's door opening, and her joining the shuffling around. "And _Tita_ May _generously_ asked me to come over for dinner, and stay until my mom gets home from work." A slight laugh entered Emmy's voice with this statement.

Having grabbed all that he needed from the kitchen, Peter walked back out into the living-slash-dining room. The sight that greeted him was Ned moving all the stuff that'd piled up on the table off to the side, and May tightly hugging Emmy, who was squirming and laughing even harder. "Of course I invited you over! How could I let my dear little Emmy have to stay all alone in her home? Especially since you haven't really spent time here in almost a year!"

Finally escaping May's embrace, with hair that was now sticking up all over the place, Emmy quipped "I stay home alone all the time!" Though, when May quickly looked at her with a pout, she beamed, "But I very much appreciate you having me over!"

May laughed and ruffled her hair, and then headed to the table to open up all of the food containers. Emmy huffed and tried to pat down her hair, before turning to Peter who was still in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. She approached him and then held out her arms. Peter looked at her curiously, and she raised her eyebrow back at him.

"What?"

"...Let me help you set up the plates, Peter."

He looked down at the plates in his hand. "Oh."

"'Oh,'" she mocked, complete with an attempted replication of his expression. Peter rolled his eyes in response, but put a plate with utensils and napkins on it in her hands. They made their way around, putting all the plates, spoons, forks, and knives neatly on the placemats that had been on the table as long as he could remember. As Emmy was placing serving spoons in the food containers, Peter looked at her and gave a quiet chuckle.

Emmy turned to look at him with a slight glare. "What are you laughing at?"

Peter tried to stifle his laugh. "Well, some of your hair is still sticking up from May's attack earlier."

A blush crawled up her cheeks, but her expression relaxed. "Oh, thanks," She mumbled, her hands moving quickly to comb her hair down. "Did I get it all?"

"Mm, some is still sticking up near the back of your head."

"Here?"

"No, a little further down."

"...here?"

"Uh, no, it's more to the left."

"...here? Did I get it yet?"

Peter laughed, and moved to stand closer to her. "Let me do it, I don't think you're going to get it anytime soon." He leaned over and reached for the back of her head, softly patting down the resistant piece of hair. Once it was no longer being stubborn, he stepped back, and saw the quizzical expression on her face. He fought back the flush he could feel trying to make itself apparent as he realized what he'd just done.

Her expression faded, and she just smiled at him. "Thanks."

He gave an awkward smile back. "Uh, no problem."

"Hey, you two, let's get eating already!" Said May, as she sauntered in from the kitchen, Ned following behind her. Both of them were carrying a cup of water in each hand. "Come on, sit down!"

* * *

After dinner, they cleared the table and then proceeded to laze around the living room. May was sitting at the now-empty dining table and attempting to finish the crossword she'd started that morning. The three teens occasionally offered help (because she kept uttering the clues out loud), but she refused each offer. Ned and Peter were sitting on one of the couches, with a bowl of popcorn and chocolates sitting in between them. They were finally getting a start on the Lord of the Rings marathon they'd been trying to have for months. Emmy was sitting on the other couch, curled up by the arm and watching the movie with the boys. Or, attempting to watch, because her eyes were dropping further and further with each second that passed.

Amusedly, Peter studied her as she repeatedly would almost fall asleep, have her head slowly drop, and then jerk back awake when she'd realize she was falling asleep. After five minutes of watching this out of the corner of his eyes, he picked up the throw blanket that was near him and threw it at her.

She startled as she felt the blanket land on her face, and then glanced at Ned, who was closest to her. Seeing that the culprit was obviously not him, as he was clearly mesmerized by the movie in front of him, she turned her gaze towards Peter. Feeling the weight of Emmy's stare on him, he looked at her and mouthed "Go to sleep."

She looked at him for a few more seconds before mouthing back a "Thanks," and proceeding to unfold the blanket, and spread it over her as she stretched out along the couch.

* * *

Eventually, Ned and Peter figured that they would definitely not be able to marathon the whole series in one sitting because of two things. One reason being Ned's dad had called at 10:15, saying that he was on his way to pick him up and bring him home. The other reason was, as much as they were trying to fight it off, they were exhausted.

May had already gone into her room half an hour earlier to go to sleep since she had work the following morning. Peter felt a smidgeon of shame pass through him as she visibly relaxed when she realized he wouldn't be going out to patrol tonight. _Do I just not notice how much it stresses her out?_ She gave him and Ned a kiss on the cheek as she said "Good night," before moving to pet Emmy's head as she slept on. She flashed them one last tired smile, before going into her room and shutting the door.

At 10:45, Ned's dad called again and said that he was outside, and both of them sluggishly picked themselves off the couch. After a never ending stream of yawns and variations of "I'm tired," leaving their mouths, Ned had miraculously been able to pack up all his stuff, get to the door and put his shoes on.

"I guess I'm not going to be able to watch it."

"Watch what? The next movie? We can try next week, maybe?"

"No, that's not what I'm talking about."

"What then?"

"The showdown."

"The… showdown?"

"Yeah, between you and Emmy!"

"Oh, god. I almost forgot I had to talk to her about that." Peter groaned, bringing his hands up to rub at his temples. Ned pushed Peter's hands away, and placed his own hands on Peter's shoulders.

"Good luck soldier, you're going to need it."

Peter gave him a flat look. "Thanks. I guess."

Ned laughed, dropping his hands and moving to open the door. "I'm sure it actually won't go that bad, dude. I'll talk to you tomorrow, my dad has been waiting for a while now. Thanks for having me over! And get some sleep tonight, Peter!"

"No problem, Ned. And I will." He said, as Ned walked down the hall towards the stairwell. Right before Ned turned to go down the stairs, Peter called out. "Text me when you see your dad!"

"Will do!"

Peter closed the door and pulled himself back to the couch that he vacated earlier. Looking over at Emmy, he saw that she was still sleeping. _She must be really tired, it's been about two hours since she knocked out. Then again, I know forsure that she was awake 'til at least 3AM, so she must not have gotten much sleep today either…_

He sighed, and sank into a slouch. All he could do was wonder about how troublesome the inevitable conversation he was going to have with her was going to be. _It's not that I think she'd do anything horrible, really. There's no reason she would, but… I really don't know! I'm just so anxious._

Before he could contemplate the situation any further, his thoughts were interrupted by the loud _ping!_ of his phone. He checked the message, before quickly typing out a reply.

 **Ned Leeds (10:57PM):** w my dad. omw home now

 **Peter Parker (10:57PM):** Alright, get home safe!

 **Ned Leeds (10:57PM):** will do

Hearing a stirring out of his peripheral, he glanced to the side and saw Emmy blinking and moving to sit up.

She stretches for a second before yawning. "Di' Ned leave already?"

"Yeah, just a while ago."

Emmy pouted. "Aww man, I finally get to hang out with you guys again and I spend the whole time sleeping."

"When you're tired, you're tired I guess." Peter let out a chuckle, before straightening up and looking intently at her. "Emmy—"

"What time is it?"

"Huh? Oh, it's 11PM. Em—"

"Ah, my mom probably just got off, she'll be home in about thirty minutes then."

"Em—"

"Maybe I should—" She was closing her eyes again, like she was about to go back to sleep. _I have to do this now. Or it's never going to happen._

"Emmy!" She jerked back, looking startledly at him. "Sorry. Didn't mean to get that loud, I just… we need to talk."

"Talk about what?"

"About what happened last night."

"Happened last…." Emmy still seemed a little dazed, but as she processed what she was saying, her eyes widened and she moved to sit properly on the couch and look him him the eyes. "You mean your superhero thing."

Peter winced. "Yeah. That. My superhero thing."

"Well, what do you want to talk about specifically?"

"I just…" He hesitated, not knowing how to phrase what he wanted to say. "I just… want to make sure you're going to keep it secret. That you're not going to do anything." _Wow, Peter, that didn't sound accusatory at all._

Emmy glared at him. The same glare that she gave last night, but this time he didn't have to protection of his suit to hide behind. It felt like she was glaring into his soul. "What, Peter, exactly do you think I'm going to do?"

"Well…"

"Do you think I'm going to run to the press and reveal your identity?"

"No, I—"

"That I'm going to hand you over to a bad guy or something?"

"No!"

She scoffed in disbelief. "Maybe you think I'm going to try to make money off of this?"

"No! Of course not." _I mean, I guess those were some things I thought about…_

"Then what?" Emmy cried out, looking slightly frustrated.

"I… honestly don't know." Peter muttered, sinking his face into his hands. "This was never supposed to happen. None of you were ever supposed to know, but Ned knows, and May knows, and now _you_ know. And I'm just so tired, it's like my mind is constantly in overdrive. When you found out last night, all I could do was think about how stupid I was to make such a silly mistake, and then worry about all these scenarios that I knew would never happen."

Peter could hear Emmy moving, but didn't really register what she was doing until he felt the couch sink a little next to him. Emmy pulled his hands away from his face, and looked at him with a softer expression than before. "I'm still insulted that you could even think that I'd do something that'd hurt you." She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth for a few seconds, before staring at him again. "But I get where you're coming from."

"You… do?"

"Yeah. Well, not entirely. I obviously can't relate to being an overworked Spider-boy," she laughed a little, but he was still too shaken up, so she continued on. "I'm more of an anomaly than Ned and May. We've known each other for a long time, but we were never really the closest of friends. Especially now, aside from greetings, we've probably had less than ten conversations in the last two years. We don't even go to the same school, so the only times we see each other are usually when we're passing each other in the hallway outside. So it makes total sense that you'd worry about my reaction."

Peter let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and gave her a watery smile. "I… Yeah, I think you got it spot on. I just… really didn't know what to expect."

Emmy gave him a playful glare. "I am still slightly offended." Her expression quickly changed into a huge grin. "I mean, how could I ever do something bad to the boy that once slipped on ice and face-planted because he was accompanying me to the bakery down the street?"

Peter gave her a dead-pan look at the recollection and the accompanying giggles that came with it. "I try to block that memory out."

"And I will never allow that!" The smile she had as she said that brought out her dimples in full-force, and her eyes were almost twinkling in the dimmed light of the living room. He couldn't help but smile back.

"I really am sorry Emmy."

"I already told you it's fine!" She insisted, as she hit him on the shoulder. She tilted her head to the side, getting lost in thought for a bit, before giving him a serious look. "That being said…"

Peter stiffened at the sudden shift in her tone. "What?"

"That was a really stupid mistake you made last night, Peter!" Emmy smacked him on the shoulder even harder, though it probably hurt her more than him, to emphasize her point. "How can you expect to be a superhero with a secret identity when you're so tired you can't even find the right room?"

"..."

"No retort for that, huh? Because it's true. And your voice! It's so distinct!" She chastised. "'I'm Spider-Man!'" She mocked, complete with an overly exaggerated squeak.

"I do not sound like that!"

"Yes, you do!"

"I really don't." As he said this, a _ping!_ went off, coming from the couch Emmy had occupied earlier.

"You totally do." She stood up and went to check her phone. "Ah, my mom is home!"

"I don't." He muttered, though he moved to stand up as well, gathering her belongings as she put on her jacket and shoes.

After checking to make sure she had everything, she turned towards him, gave him a contemplative look, and then circled her arms around him in an embrace. He froze for a few seconds, before relaxing and hugging her back. She murmured "Get some sleep Peter," then she pulled back and flashed him another smile, and made her way out of the apartment and into the one next door.

* * *

That night, almost in an echo of the night before, he found himself face-down on his bed, reaching around for his phone that had just alerted him with a notification. Flipping himself over, he took a look at the message on his screen. The reaction to the last night's text, however, was not echoed at all. Even though it should have filled him with annoyance, he couldn't help the smile that spread across his face as he read the message.

* * *

 **Emmy Cruz (12:41AM):** Good night Peter! (: Sleep as much as you can. (And you totally do sound like that)

 **Peter Parker (12:44AM):** G'night Emmy. Will do! (And I really don't)

* * *

 **a/n:** rebirth (환생) - red velvet (originally by yoon jong-shin) is what I listened to while writing this chapter


	4. write in pretty letters

예쁘게 눌러 쓴 글씨는  
친구 이상을 분명히 말하잖아

my effort to write in pretty letters  
clearly tells you that I think of you  
as more than a friend

\- lovelyz

* * *

The weeks after the dinner at Peter's place really had a tangible shift. As nerve-wracking as that day was, the conclusion of it left him feeling lighter than he had for months. He ended up cutting back on his patrols considerably, much to the relief of all the adults in his life. May had even told him that she was actually on the verge of staging an intervention, and if he hadn't decided to make the change himself, he probably would have found himself locked in his room at some point.

He just felt more calm, and the quiet of the city didn't leave him quite as restless as it once did.

Immediately following that conversation with Emmy, he imagined that she might be appearing in his life more often, but that didn't really happen. They still would see each other in passing around the apartment building, though that was the extent of their interactions. It was almost like he'd just dreamt up the whole encounter.

It wasn't until three weeks later that they finally, really saw each other again. After a successful decathlon competition that his team had even missed half the school day for for, some of them were heading out to a boba shop that Cindy had found on Instagram to chill. In typical Flash fashion, he spent the entire trip over goading Peter on.

He was able to block most of it out by putting earbuds in. Even though they were actually just walking the distance from the subway, he trusted his enhanced senses to keep him alert (and he'd honestly rather walk into a pole than listen to Flash). But eventually, Flash realized no one was listening to him and pulled one of the buds out of his ear. "Hey Penis Parker! You're still at that Stark internship right?"

"Yes, Flash, I am." He grumbled as he snatched the earbud back.

"Not that I believe you," Flash sent him a look that was more than likely meant to look smug, but really just looked constipated. "But if that's true, then why are you still boring? You've been there for so long, shouldn't you be rich and surrounded by girls or something by now?"

Peter gave him a blank stare. "It's an internship. I work. In a lab."

Not acknowledging his statement, Flash continued on. "I don't think you even know any girls outside of aca-dec. If I had that internship, I'd be dating a model by now. Or the Black Widow."

"Who do you think you are, Flash? Young Leo DiCaprio?" Cindy gave him an incredulous look. "Anyway, if you had that internship, they'd fire you after an hour."

"They wouldn't even hire him." Ned chirped in.

"I'm pretty sure they would just throw his application straight into the trash." MJ deadpanned, not lifting her gaze from the book she was reading.

Abe laughed, "It probably wouldn't even reach them because his email would be flagged as spam!"

This time, Flash wasn't so unaffected, his face turning visibly red, but he kept talking like he hadn't heard any of it. As they entered the shop, he taunted, "I bet Penis Parker can't even talk to girls." He said this loud enough that some of the other patrons actually looked over for a second.

Cindy was embarrassed at the sudden attention given to their group. "Can't you just learn how to shut up?"

"I'll shut up," He started, looking around the shop, before settling his gaze on a group in the corner. "If he talks to one of those girls over there!"

Peter closed his eyes and clenched his fists, trying to hold back his irritation, while the other aca-dec members turned to follow Flash's line of sight. He only opened his eyes when he heard Ned trying to stifle down a snort. Ned's was practically buzzing with excitement as he made eye-contact with Peter, and gestured for him to look behind him. _What could he possibly find amusing about this situa— Oh!_

Sitting in one of the comfy armchairs, and staring quite intently at a laptop, was Emmy. She was surrounded by a few of her other friends that, judging by the pile of stuff along the side of the coffee table in the middle of their chairs, were in the band with her. There was a lot of space in the area where they were sitting, the five of them only taking three of the six chairs.

Peter didn't know most of them, only recognizing Emmy's best friend, Lily, who was seated next to her and also boring a hole into the laptop with her stare. All of them were distracted and not really talking to each other, though the other members of their party seemed to be occasionally trash talking each other while playing a game on some handheld console. Those three were squished onto one chair, with only one of them actually on the seat of a chair, while the other two were perched on the arms.

"So what Parker?" _Flash just never stops, does he?_ "Are you worried you're going to show off how much of a loser you are?"

Shooting him a glare, Peter steeled his resolve and started to make his way towards Emmy's group. His first step started off fairly confident, but it felt like every ounce of courage was being leeched out of him with the the subsequent ones. _Why am I doing this? I don't actually need to prove anything to him? And what if I'm just going to be bothering Emmy? It's not like she came here to be used for something like this…_

Before he could sink further into his doubts, Emmy looked up and made eye-contact with him, and he could swear her eyes were almost twinkling. He was only a few feet away from her when she quirked her lips into a small smile, and then pushed herself out of her chair.

Emmy beamed at him. "Peter!" He didn't even have time to ponder her intentions before she set into motion. If he wasn't Spider-Man, he probably would have staggered backwards at the force with which she flew at him, flinging her arms around his neck. He caught her and circled his arms around her waist reflexively, since he practically had to hold her up. The difference in their height was significant enough that she was on her toes. _If I was just a little bit taller, she'd probably be hovering off the floor._

"Your friend sounds lovely, Peter." She whispered into his ear. _Ah, so she'd heard all of that…_

He murmured back, "Not my friend," before letting go of her. She unwound her arms from around him, and settled back down, rocking on her feet. Emmy sent him another small smile while grabbing his wrist and pulling him towards the empty seat next to her.

"Hey Peter," Lily greeted with a wave, from Emmy's other side. "Haven't seen ya in a while."

"Hey." Peter returned, with an awkward smile.

"Ned! Why don't you guys come over here?" Emmy called out, beckoning the rest of his group over with her hands. Peter glanced at them, and was pleased to see Flash looking torn between feeling embarrassed and furious.

"Sure thing Em, we'll just get our drinks first." Ned said, giving her a thumbs up. Peter was about to stand up, but Ned waved him off. "It's fine Peter, you can stay there, I know what you want. Plus I owe you for that coffee last week anyway."

"Oh, thanks Ned." This time, the thumbs up was directed at him. Peter looked back towards Emmy. "So what are you guys doing here?"

She and Lily had turned their attentions back to the laptop in front of them, which was displaying what looked to be a figure skating stream on a Russian website. As the skate came to an end, both of them looked at him and Emmy replied. "Hmm? Ah, well we got out of band practice early today, so we were supposed to study for our upcoming Calculus exam next week."

Peter raised his eyebrow at them, and gestured at the laptop in front of them. "Studying… for Calculus?"

Lily laughed and Emmy gave a sheepish smile. "I said _supposed_ to, not that we were. We got distracted."

"I can see that," Peter chuckled. As the next skater was taking the ice, Lily angled the laptop so Peter could watch as well. "I guess you two are still into figure skating? I remember you guys falling in Emmy's living room trying to do the spins on the hardwood." _Wow, it's been years since then._

Lily grimaced, "God, I remember that. I had bruises forever afterwards."

"I know, me too! And the downstairs neighbors even came up to ask if we were okay," Emmy giggled, though her face was turning red. "That was so embarrassing."

All three of them had soft smiles at the memories that had come up, but quieted as the skater started their program. They didn't speak for the next four minutes, the only sounds being made were the anxious squeals whenever the skater jumped. By the time the program had ended, Ned and the others in the decathlon team were already standing next to them, with Ned handing Peter his drink.

"Thanks Ned!"

"Why don't you all sit? We can pull over some more chairs!" Emmy said. They all bustled around, trying to make enough room for everyone to sit. "Oh, I totally forgot, let me introduce you all!"

As everyone settled into their seats and introduced themselves, Peter shuffled around uncomfortably by his previous seat, which he'd given up for Cindy and MJ to share. Ned and Abe has taken the seats near the other three in Emmy's group, and were excitedly watching them play their game— _Smash, of course—_ which they'd propped up on the table so everyone could see. Flash had managed to pull another seat by them, and was just irritatedly scrolling on his phone. There were no other open seats or tables in the shop since it was already around dinner time, and they were especially busy since it was a Friday. _Maybe I'll just go over to Ned._

Peter started to move, but before he could even take one step, Emmy piped out, "Peter, why don't you sit?" as she scooted over as much as she could in her chair. The chair was fairly large, MJ and Cindy were both sitting on the actual seat of their own chair and still managed to have some space. Emmy grabbed his wrist and pulled him down next to her.

They, however, did not have it as easy as MJ and Cindy. They had to wiggle around a bit, before realizing that they'd have to angle themselves since both their hips were just not fitting on the chair. They ended up with Peter sitting pretty normally, but Emmy was almost leaning on him so she could sit comfortably.

During the commotion, Lily had taken the laptop and was browsing on her own, so Emmy just shifted her attention to Peter. "I never asked, what are you guys doing here?"

"We're just celebrating." Peter shrugged. "We won our decathlon competition."

"Oh, what kind of questions did you get?"

"I got the final question, it was proving a physics formula," he sheepishly scratched the back of his head. "I got it right."

"Really?" Emmy nudged him with her shoulder. "How awesome! Look at you utilizing your nerd powers!"

"Nerd powers?" Peter scoffed playfully. "It's called intellect. And you're saying all this like you're not a nerd yourself."

Emmy snickered. "They are nerd powers, how else would you know the proof of a formula off the top of your head?" She shook her head. "Powers I tell you! And I may be a nerd, but I don't go to a fancy-schmancy school like you do," she sighed dramatically, "so, alas! My powers were never allowed to come into fruition!"

Shaking his own head with a fond smile, Peter laughed. "You're so lame, Em."

"I'm wonderful, thank you very much!" Emmy replied, as they both smiled at each other. They talked for a while after that, and eventually got sucked into a debate with Cindy about how they thought Game of Thrones was going to end, with MJ chipping in a few of her own opinions every now and then.

As if he had his own version of Spidey Senses—Flash Senses, if you will, which alert him of people that are _not_ him talking, and being praised and liked—Flash let out an obviously fake, loud cough to bring attention to himself. "So how long have you two known each other Pen-Peter?"

Emmy could feel Peter tense at Flash's words, so she replied in his stead. "For a long time." She quirked her brow at him, and put on an uninterested stare. "Why?"

"No reason, really. I just want to know how long Peter has been pretending to be cool around you. Or how long you've been pretending to be his friend."

Peter shut his eyes and let out a shaky breath. "Leave her a—" "You're such a douchebag!" Peter's eyes shot open at Emmy's words, turning to look at her so fast he could have gotten whiplash.

"Wh-why do you say that?" Flash sputtered, not quite used to the confrontation rather than the normal ignorance given to his statements. "I didn't mean anything by what I said, I just wanted to know."

"W- _why?"_ Emmy laughed in disbelief. "You act like a dick, and you can't even own up to it? You've been terrible to Peter since the moment you walked in here, probably before then too! I'm not sure why he just takes it, but I sure as hell won't. I don't like you. If I could, I'd KonMari you because you don't spark joy."

MJ and Cindy laughed, while Lily cackled at the end of her rant. "God, Em, you're so lame."

Emmy smiled at her. "Love you too!"

Flash looked broken at this point, not really processing the fact that someone that he didn't even know stood up to him and _for Peter Parker._ Peter himself, didn't know how to react to the turn of events.

Emmy could see that the cogs in Flash's head were slowly starting to turn again, and not wanting to deal with him anymore, before he could even get a word out, she was on her feet pulling Peter up by his hands. They were almost uncomfortably close as she looked up at him with a determined gaze.

"Walk me home Peter."

Peter gave her a questioning expression, before looking at the group around them. All the people that were playing Smash had gone back to doing just that, and MJ had also gone back to reading her book. Lily looked amused, and Cindy had her head tilted looking at him. What sealed the deal, however, was how destroyed Flash looked at the situation. He seemed like his world had been flipped and thrown into a garbage can.

Peter glanced back at Emmy with a smile. "Sure."

They gathered all their stuff, and put their coats on. Peter picked up Emmy's instrument case, and she gave him a grateful look. As they were making sure they had everything, Peter could hear Flash squeak out "He's taking her home?!" and Ned reply "They're neighbors you loser!"

She bounded back towards Lily, and gave her a hug, and then said bye to her group of friends. "Bye guys, I'll see you on Monday!" She waved towards the decathlon members, "And it was nice meeting you all!" When her gaze passed over Flash, she schooled her face into a blank expression and said "Not you." before stepping a little further away from the chairs.

Peter gave an awkward wave to the group, still a little in a daze at the situation. "Ah, bye guys. It was nice meeting you." He glanced at Ned. "And I'll see you tomorrow Ned, just text me when you're on your way."

"Will do!" Ned said with a grin.

Feeling a hand grasp his own, Peter turned in time to see Emmy tugging his hand and pulling him to the door. "Come on Peter, let's go! The bakery might still have some cookies."

Peter laughed and allowed himself to be dragged out. "Alright, let's go."

* * *

They got off the subway one stop earlier than the one they usually took to get home so they could pass by the bakery and take a look at what they still had in stock. Luckily for Emmy, a few of the cookies that she wanted were still there. Since the bakery was about to close when they got there, she bought everything that was left. Peter also cleared out a huge amount of the pastries. Like an almost obscene amount.

When they got out of the store, she asked him, "Can you really eat all that?"

Peter just replied, "Spider."

"Ah."

And they continued walking towards their apartment building. She was moving a little slowly because of the harsh, cold wind that was going against them, and he was keeping pace with her. They were basically alone on the street since it was so chilly, and it was already well into the evening.

"Hey Peter," she started, "Sorry if I came on a little strong earlier."

"It's good." He paused, "Thanks for standing up for me. I honestly got surprised at how worked up you got."

They were still quite a ways away from their building, but she stopped walking, getting him to stop as well and look at her.

"I couldn't just watch someone talk to you like that!" Emmy huffed, "I don't understand why you didn't stop him yourself. Why would you let him treat you like that?"

Peter looked down at his feet. "I don't really know. I guess it just doesn't seem as important compared to the _other_ things going on in my life."

Emmy walked up right next to him and hooked her arm around his free arm, which wasn't holding her instrument case and his food, forcing him to shift his gaze from the ground to her. "Peter Parker! I know that the _other_ things about the other person in your life are really important, and that you might think they're your only priorities. But just Peter Parker is important too." She bumped him with her hip. "You're important too, Peter, you gotta remember that."

He was quiet for a few seconds, not really knowing how to respond. He ended up mustering up a soft smile. "Thanks, Emmy, I'll try to remember that…"

"You better!" She grinned, her dimple coming out in full force. "Now, let's get home! It's super cold." She tugged on his arm.

"Haha, alright!" Once again, Peter let himself be pulled along by her. "By the way, I wanted to ask you…"

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't you get scared when I showed up in your room that night?"

"Oh," Emmy laughed. "I was terrified! But I could kind of make you out even without my glasses, your _clothes_ are very prominent."

"But even if you knew it was… _me,_ " he pushed. "It still could have been a stranger."

"Welllllll," Emmy drawled. "Thing is, I kind of already knew that _that_ was _you_. Or suspected at least."

Peter looked at her, startled. "You did? How?!"

She started skipping, dragging him. "Your voice!" She chirped.

"You're just messing with me, aren't you?" He pulled away from her.

"No! I'm telling you, your voice is so distinct." At the end of the her statement, her voice twisted into a exaggerated impersonation of his.

"I don't sound like that!"

"Yeah, you do!" Emmy giggled, approaching him and grabbing his hand with her ridiculously cold one. "Now, let's hurry! I'm not kidding, I'm so cold right now."

"I can tell, your hand feels like ice." Peter chuckled, as they quickened their pace. "Hey, Em?"

"Mm?"

"It's been nice talking to you again. We should hang out more often."

"I'd love that Peter!" She beamed. "But first, let's get home. Or all that's left of me will be a block of ice."

* * *

 **a/n:** lost n found (찾아가세요) by lovelyz is what I listened to while writing this chapter

I meant to post this a while ago since it's already up on ao3, but it kept slipping my mind! thanks for the reviews, follows and favorites~ I'll keep on writing when I can! (: Please let me know what you think about the story so far as well!


	5. the firefly from that day

이 밤 그날의 반딧불을  
당신의  
창 가까이 띄울게요  
음 좋은 꿈 이길 바라요

tonight, I'll send you the firefly from that day  
to somewhere near your window.  
I hope you have sweet dreams.

-iu

* * *

Surprisingly, the agreement they made to hang out doesn't end up being empty words. Just a week later Emmy ends up asking him to go accompany her to the ice skating rink at Rockefeller. The second he gets the message from her, Peter started freaking out, because this really was not what he'd thought of when he made that request of her. _I was thinking more like "Hey, we should play video games with Ned," rather than "We should go do something that other people might actually do on dates!"_

The way she'd let Flash and the others believe they were flirting and possibly even taking her home was just leaving them to such a strange dynamic. Where did they stand? They were friends, but never best friends. Not even talk to each other every day friends. They see each other around the building a lot, see each other because of her mom and May a lot, but, prior to these last couple of weeks, they'd only actually, _really_ talked to each other a few times a year ever since they'd reached their teens. And, even with his enhanced senses and his intelligence, he can't read her as well as she can read him. He doesn't even know her that well anymore, honestly. _Could she like me? I don't like her like that, I haven't really liked anyone since… Ugh, Peter you're doing the most thinking about this. You know she just likes skating! But… if the_ _ **Incident**_ _has never happened,_ _ **this**_ _wouldn't be happening… so..._

Where were they going? This friendship, where has it heading? Without even trying, she knows some of the most intimate secrets of his life. Simply because she lives next-door. But she seems to be so calm about it? A few weeks ago, he was worried that she would sell him out and he as much as told her that to her face! Yet, here she is, defending him from Flash, asking him to ice skate with her...

Peter was on the verge of a breakdown. His experience talking to girls was just so negligible, and the only prominent interaction he'd recently had was with... Liz. Yeah, not good and really did not work out. His nerves are almost immediately proven to be unfounded though, when she messages him not even ten minutes after the invitation she'd extended.

 **Emmy Cruz (8:51PM):** Before you read too much into this, I'm only asking you because everyone else said no

 **Emmy Cruz (8:51PM):** They apparently don't want to see me disaster out there

 **Emmy Cruz (8:52PM):** I can feel you freaking out all the way over here

 **Emmy Cruz (8:52PM):** But you're my only hope

 **Emmy Cruz (8:52PM):** UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO GO ALL THE WAY OVER THERE BY MYSELF

 **Peter Parker (8:55PM):** …

 **Peter Parker (8:55PM):** How did you know I was freaking out?

 **Peter Parker (8:58PM):** Uh, but I guess I can

 **Emmy Cruz (9:08PM):** Awesooooomeeeee! Thank you!

 **Emmy Cruz (9:08PM):** See you tomorrow then!

* * *

It was a little strange asking him to go with her. The recent developments in their relationship had been such a 180 from the track that they'd been on, before the _Incident_ she was almost certain they'd just become people that were only updated about each other through throwaway mentions by their guardians. That fate was basically set, looking at the lack of interaction they'd had as the years went by. That fate _was_ set. But the _Incident_ did happen, and the paths that were starting to separate seemed to be thrown into a blender with a green smoothie—ingredients that together tasted sweet, but were virtually indecipherable.

Point is, Emmy was completely lost as to what was going on in their relationship, what would go on in their lives moving forward—because _holy shit, she knows his secret identity?!—_ and it was slightly terrifying because her life was supposed to be pretty bland. She was just a girl that was decent at band, decent at schoolwork, had a decent amount of friends, and decent ambitions in life. MShe wasn't aiming for a prestigious school or anything, she didn't want to be a millionaire or a celebrity. She was just trying to go to community college and figure out what she wanted to major in, and from there transfer to a nearby university so she wouldn't have to be far from her mom and her sister in the suburbs who'd just had a baby last year.

But instead, here she was, with information some people could potentially destroy her for— _and, wait. Does Spider-Man have enemies like that?—_ about a boy that's lived next door to her most of her life, who's always been a sweet, sort of friend that she knew how to freak out during the occasional times that they did hang out, and who still doesn't really stand up for himself even though he has amazing powers? It's been lingering in the back of her mind ever since she'd encountered him, when he'd sleepily mistaken her room for his. Someone could hurt her for knowing this. Torture her. Kidnap her. _Kill_ her.

Obviously she doesn't want any of that to happen. But Peter wasn't just Spider-Man, he wasn't even just the boy next-door. He was the person that would do anything for his wonderful aunt, who'd fight the world for Ned, who'd wait in the lobby for an extra thirty minutes to make sure her mom would have help bringing the groceries up the eternally out-of-order elevator on Mondays, who'd slipped on ice when they were ten just to go with her to the bakery to get cookies the day her parents announced they were getting divorced…

So maybe Emmy wouldn't quite say that she'd _die_ for him, but she would do _a lot_ for him. Try to keep him as safe as she could, try to get him to value himself and his happiness a little more. They might not have been close over the last few years, but she knows, always has known, that he was a great person. Destined for great things. And if she could help him even just the smallest bit? She wouldn't turn down the opportunity.

It's just a bonus that she now has someone she can drag to the ice skating rink with her.

* * *

The weather wasn't exactly _freezing_ when they went out. They know what freezing is like, have lived through it in their lives in New York. That doesn't mean it wasn't cold though, particularly with the wind gusts that seemed to be determined to sweep them off their feet. Peter was still feeling pretty chilly, even though he was probably warmer than most normal people. He managed to be a functioning human with some decently layered clothing and a jacket.

Emmy, on the other hand, once again resembled a small marshmallow with the layers she'd worn, complete with a scarf and gloves. It wasn't _actually_ a ridiculous amount, but the pink-puffy down jacket she had on made him think of the strawberry marshmallows that Pepper had once brought back for May from France.

Any worries he'd had about whatever this hang out was immediately dissipated when he saw her armour against the cold. He couldn't help the amused smile that appeared on his face at the sight of her as they both entered the hallway, which she'd responded to with an exaggerated pout.

"Don't look at me like that, you _know_ I get cold!" Emmy's pout was accompanied by a playful irritated tone. "I'm just trying to be prepared!"

"Hey, I didn't actually say anything!" Peter laughed.

"I could hear you laughing at my outfit in your head," her pout got even deeper, but didn't last much longer before she broke out into a laugh and turned to make sure her door was locked. "I hope your morning has been good so far?"

"Yeah, it has been." He gave her a pointed look while the started down the stairs. "I've, uh. Well. I've been sleeping a lot more recently."

"Oh!" Emmy smiled softly at him. "Good! That's super good!"

"It... really is." They settled into a comfortable silence as they went down the last few flights of stairs. As he held the door out of the building open for her, he realized he hadn't returned the sentiments towards her. "How was your morning?"

"Hm? Hold on." He chuckled at her current predicament, as she tried to lift her scarf up far enough on her face that it warmed her nose, but wouldn't make her breath fog up her glasses. She eventually failed, and settled the scarf back low around her neck. "It was great, my mom made champorado—you know, the chocolate rice porridge thing?—and I FaceTimed my sister, got to see my cute niece. And don't laugh at me!"

"I can't help it, you and the cold really don't agree, huh?" Emmy glared for a second, then shrugged because it was true. "How is your sister? I don't think I've seen her around recently?"

"Yeah, she hasn't really been back in this area since she got married a few years ago huh?" She moved as close to him as she could to steal some of his warmth without touching him as they continued their trek to the subway. "I think they're doing well, I don't see them that often, but my mom does. You heard she had a baby though, right?" He nodded his affirmative. "Well, she's super cute, cuter than anything I've ever seen! She just started walking!"

Peter grinned at her excitement, she was almost skipping as she regaled her information to him. He knew that it was hard on her when her sister, who was older than them by more than a decade, had gotten married, leaving her and her mom behind in the city to move to the suburbs just a year or two after her parents got divorced. She'd never been outright _sad,_ but he'd overheard May and her mom speaking sometimes, talking about how she'd get so sullen and wouldn't talk to anyone about when she was having any problems. And how they honestly didn't even _know_ if she was having any problems, since she was left alone at home for so long. It was comforting to see that she ended up taking the situation in stride.

"Do you have any other plans for the weekend?" Peter questioned her, as they waited on the platform for the next train.

"No!" she fake-cried out. "I'm just going to finish up some homework tonight. Then I'm going to be alone tomorrow at home, since my sister asked my mom to stay at her house. My brother-in-law has a work assignment that's apparently keeping him and his team cooped up in the lab all day."

"Oh? Why aren't you going with her?"

"I have band practice all morning!" Emmy whined. "I didn't want them to have to wait on me. Thus, my boring rest of the weekend. At least it's a long weekend, so Monday I can just laze around and eat cereal or something. What about you?"

"I've got an essay I need to finish tonight too," They both made faces at each other, relaying how gross they found the statement. "So no… _work_ tonight. I'll just go to work tomorrow, especially since May will be working a double. PM and graveyard. Then Monday… I'll honestly probably do the same as you."

Emmy frowned at the mention of his _work_ , knowing quite surely what he was actually referring to. "Stay safe going to work…"

Peter held her concerned stare before nodding. "I will."

As they entered the subway car, they were lucky enough to find one with open seats for both of them, especially since they were able to just take one train without any transferring. Emmy spent the whole time showing Peter photos on her phone of her niece, who admittedly, was one of the most adorable babies he'd ever seen.

They were in good spirits as they exited the subway and made their way to the rink, even as Emmy continued her never-ending battle against the cold. Peter laughed at the irony—she hated the cold, but really wanted to ice skate.

"I want to be an ice princess! Like that movie." Emmy exclaimed as they laced their rental skates.

"Didn't you say your friends didn't want to go with you because they were worried you were just going to disaster out here?"

"Yes…" she muttered under her breath. "I'm not that bad!"

"Sure…" Peter shot her a teasing look, to which she responded with a playful punch to his shoulder. "Well, let's not put off the disaster any longer." He started walking to the entrance of the rink.

"Hey! Don't be mean. I'm seriously not that bad."

…

Turns out, she really _wasn't_ that bad. In fact, she was perfectly capable of moving across the ice quite easily. She could even stop, which couldn't be said of some of the other skaters that were in the public skate with them. The real problem was, she kept wanting to move faster than she actually could. Every time she fell, it was only because she tried to pick up her pace and lost her sense of where her balance was on the blade.

Peter wasn't necessarily the greatest skater in the world, he certainly wasn't capable (at the moment at least, since he'd never tried) of the fancy tricks that figure skaters could do. He was pretty good though. Even without his enhanced abilities, he was already decent because he'd actually gone pretty often to the rink when he was younger with May and Ben during the holidays. This was the first time he'd gone back since that fateful day when he'd gotten bitten by that spider, but he's glad to see that it didn't mess with his skating skills. It actually increased his agility and ability to maneuver around the ice.

After the third time Emmy fell, Peter skated towards her with a snicker. "You're not even a bad skater, Em. You just keep trying to move faster than you can shift your center of gravity."

"But Peter! I need to move faster, or I'll never be an ice princess." Emmy scrunched up her nose with a pout.

"You'd probably be more of an ice princess if you stayed upright."

"But… even that eight year old can move faster than me!" She whined, still sitting on the ice while pointing at a small kid flying across the ice.

Peter laughed and held out a hand to pull her up. "Em, I'm pretty sure from looking at the non-rental skates and the _spin_ that kid just did that she takes actual lessons."

"I guess…" Emmy was still pouting.

"Come on, you'll never get faster if you don't keep going." Peter kept hold of the hand he'd used to help her stand, and started to drag her up until she was comfortably moving again, then he kept pace with her.

They circled around the rink a few more times, before he realized she was slowing considerably. At that point, they'd already been skating for well over an hour. She looked happy enough, despite the numerous falls and inevitable bruises that were going to appear, and he was about to suggest they leave before an idea popped into his head.

"Hey Em," he called out to her, as she leaned forward with her back against the wall, retying the laces of her skate. "Do you trust me?"

She looked at him questioningly as she stood up, but replied anyway. "Duh." She held his gaze as a smile began to spread over his face. "I wouldn't have asked you to come with me if I didn't."

Peter felt a happiness spread through him as she uttered those words and at the thought of his plan. "Since you _do_ trust me," he turned his back towards her, "grab onto the back of my jacket. It should stretch enough."

"...why?"

"Just do it." A few seconds passed before he felt her grasp onto his jacket. He looked over his shoulder at her with a grin. "Hold on tight!"

"Wh— holy! Peter what are you doing?!" Emmy screamed, as he started to skate as fast as he could without hitting anything or anyone. While most people would slow significantly, even on ice, with the added weight of another person, his increased strength allowed him to move like there was nothing latched on to him.

Very quickly after her moment of terror, Emmy actually started to enjoy the speed she'd have never reach on her own. She realized after the first sharp turn around the perimeter of the rink that he wasn't going to lose control, even with her holding onto him. Since they'd headed to the rink fairly early, and it wasn't really peak season yet for visitors, they had pretty much free reign of the place since he could easily avoid all the other skaters.

They managed three laps around the rink in this fashion, and kept going until the worker actually looked up and noticed them and called for them to stop. When Peter finally got them to slow to a standstill, he moved to face Emmy, who was giggling uncontrollably. As their eyes met, her smile spread out full force and her dimples became ridiculously prominent before she jumped up and threw her arms around his neck. He was surprised that his feet were actually still planted on the ice with the force of her hug. _Woah! Thank you spider skills!_

Emmy cried out, not realizing that she wasn't even touching the ground and that he was physically holding her up, with her arms still wrapped around him. "That was awesome!"

Peter chuckled, tightening his arms that he'd circled around her as soon as she flew at him for a second, before setting her back down on the ice. "You wanted to skate fast so…"

"It felt like I was flying!" She exclaimed, flinging her arms out. "That eight year old can suck it! They'll never move that fast."

Peter snorted at how satisfied she looked at her last statements. "Well, I'm here at your service."

Emmy grinned again, before she gave him a softer smile. "Thanks again Peter. Not just for that, but for hanging out with me."

Peter flushed at the sudden sweetening in her demeanor, suddenly thankful for the red tint his face had already taken on due to the cold. "Sure Em, it's no big deal. Someone had to make sure you didn't go out and destroy yourself out here. Let's get going though, your nose looks like it's about to fall off."

"Hey!" She protested, reaching to swat his arm. Which statement of the two, he'd never know, because her movement almost made her slip and she instinctively reached out towards him to steady herself. "Err, I think you're going to have to pull me out, Peter. I don't think I can stand anymore."

He laughed as she tested a step forward with one foot and almost collapsed. "Come on, let's head out. We can get some hot chocolate on the way to let you restore more feeling in your legs."

* * *

It was a mistake eating in her room, it always was. No matter how good the hot and sour soup from the Chinese restaurant two blocks down was, it was never worth the effort it took to rid her room of the smell. Febreeze wasn't enough, a candle wasn't enough, opening the window wasn't enough. Nothing individually was enough, all of it had to be done at the same time. So, Emmy knows that it was just a pain to eat in her room.

Problem is, the soup is _so_ good, that she always temporarily forgets that pain—locks it up in a room in her mind—as soon as the soup is placed in a bowl in front of her. The few moments of joy brought on by the consumption of the soup while watching dramas on her laptop seem to just override any thought of eating in a way that wouldn't make her miserable afterwards.

Today was particularly cold, which is why she got the soup in the first place after band practice, and which is why she is extra extra extra miserable. As soon as the soup had fully made its way into her belly, Emmy went out into the kitchen to wash the used bowl and spoon, then went back into her room to realize that it smelled so very strongly of the vinegar in the soup. She had to not only spray Febreeze, not only light a candle, but spray Febreeze, light a candle, and _open_ the window.

It was well past midnight, and she'd eaten the soup hours ago, but the smell had just left the room, which was good. But she was so tightly bundled in a swaddle of blankets at her desk as she watched her laptop, that she didn't want to stand, which was bad, because it was infuriatingly cold. Thus, her current predicament. She'd even taken off her glasses so she could wrap herself in the blankets without fogging them up.

Just as she mustered up the motivation to close the window—or really, just as the episode of the drama she was watching came to an end and she felt secure leaving the screen of her laptop for a second, she heard a rattling on the fire escape outside. Turning to look at the open window, and see what could possibly be there—A raccoon? Someone's fallen laundry from one of the upper floors? A thief?—she was greeted with a sight that felt like deja vu.

A red and blue blur of a person was once against at the sill of her window. Relieved that it wasn't the latter of the scenarios she'd imagined, or even the raccoon, Emmy let out a sigh. "Hey, I think you've got the wrong window again."

Peter let out a wheezing laugh. "Ah, no Em. I meant to go here this time." He rasped out.

Any bit of relief that she felt immediately left her as she heard the tone of his voice. She quickly reached behind her for her glasses and put them on, not letting her gaze leave the boy that was now crouched on her windowsill and stepping onto her bed. As her vision cleared, she gasped at the sight in front of her.

Peter was bleeding.

He was bleeding _a lot._

So much so that she could actually see it past the red of his suit. Emmy was frozen, shell shocked as she took in the person in front of her. After finding out he was Spider-Man, she knew, on some level, that this could happen. That Peter could get hurt. But she never thought she'd actually see it.

He suddenly groaned, collapsing onto his knees on her bed, clutching his bleeding abdomen with one hand, and she was snapped out of her reverie. She let the blankets around her fall as ran to his side. Realizing that it would be difficult to move around him on her bed, which was pushed up against the wall, she slipped her arm under one of his and around him, leaning him against her and pulling him onto the floor.

"Sorry, Petey. I… I don't. The bed is too small, I can't…" She was starting to freak out, words not forming correctly in her mouth or her head. As she settled him down and moved away from him, she paled as she saw his blood now on her own shirt.

"Hey, Hey Em." Peter pulled off his mask, then reached out for her hand, other hand still holding onto his wound. "It's okay, I'm s—" he let out a pained sound, and tears started welling up in her eyes. After catching his breath, he continued on, squeezing her hand tighter. "Sorry I have to put you through this. But I was close by already. Couldn't go… to Ned. And you… May's not home."

Emmy was still frazzled. "What… What should I do?" She wiped at the tears in her eyes with her free hand. "My mom's a nurse Peter, but I'm not a nurse! You know she's not home either! Should I take you to the hospital? Call an ambu—"

"No!" Peter cried out, almost sitting up before she gently pushed him back down. "No, 'ospital. They… they can' fin' out who I a'. And 'ow could I 'plain this as Peter Parker? 'Sides, I 'eal fas' 'nyway."

"Petey, you're bleeding out on my floor!" Emmy choked out. "I can't just rely on you saying you heal fast! Isn't there something else we can do?"

 _ **Miss Emmy?**_ Emmy startled at the unfamiliar voice, holding Peter's hand even tighter. She searched for the source of the words, and realized it was projecting from the discarded mask. _**We haven't been introduced, so you must be scared. My name is Karen, I help Peter out.**_

"O-okay? How can we help him now?"

 _ **I could call Mr. Stark in for assist—**_

Peter tried to sit up again, this time being shoved back down as well by Emmy, but a little harsher than the last time. "No' Mist' 'tar eith'!"

"Peter, you can't even speak! We have to do something!" Emmy glared at him through watery eyes, then turned back to look at the mask. "Karen, why didn't you call Mr. Stark as soon as this happened?"

 _ **Peter has disabled that function. I can only call Mr. Stark when I am ordered to.**_

"Well, I order you to! Call Mr. Stark please. Tell him Peter needs help. Now!"

"N'!" Peter cried out, as Karen simultaneously replied. _**Yes, Miss Emmy. I will do so immediately.**_ "Wh' 'ou d' tha'?!"

"Why'd I do that? Why?" Emmy exclaimed, as she looked at him again. "I can't just watch you die here Petey, not when I can help you! That's why you came here right? You wanted to me help you? So I am." Emmy was sobbing at this point, but Peter could barely open his eyes. "Karen, is there anything I can do?"

 _ **Help is on the way, Miss Emmy. But from doing a quick read on Peter's stats, it would help if you applied pressure to the wound until they arrive.**_

Emmy finally let go of his hand for the first time since he'd held onto hers earlier and slipped one of her pillowcases loose. She moved his hand that was clutching the affected area, and put the pillowcase over his wound and began to press down. Peter let out a more pained groan than any other he'd emitted that night at the increased pressure. He was bleeding so much that the sheet was immediately soaked through.

Remembering what he'd asked her the day before, Emmy croaked out an attempt at echoing his words. "Do you trust me?"

Peter wheezed out a playful scoff, fluttering on the edge of unconsciousness "Duh."

"Good." She let out a shaky laugh, wiping at the seemingly never ending stream of tears with one hand, not realizing she'd gotten some of his blood on her face. She quickly "Sorry I didn't listen to you, Petey. That I called Mr. Stark."

He moved one hand to hold over both of hers as they still applied pressure to his wound. "N'. 'S ok'. Proll' nee' 'elp." He was letting out shallow breaths, slipping further and further until he was finally unconscious. Emmy started to panic until Karen alerted her that he was still okay, and that help was less than a minute away.

"You're going to be okay, Peter." Emmy closed her eyes, not knowing what else to do. _You have to be._

* * *

 **a/n:** through the night (밤편지) by iu is what I listened to while writing this chapter.

thanks for all the new reviews, follows, and favorites! it's been really so encouraging in helping me grind out this chapter. thank you in particular to _**Aplin**_ whose reviews really got me going!

I hope I made it a little more clear just how strange their relationship is. I just remembered that, as a high schooler, every interaction was overanalyzed. A casual "hello," could be misconstrued. It could never just be "oh, they're being nice/mean." It has to be "oh, do they like/hate me?" or "are they flirting? are they messing with me?" Add to that the fact that they don't see each other as frequently as schoolmates, and were only thrown back into talking because of an accident... well, teenage minds enter overdrive at some point.

let me know what you think (:


	6. leaves that embrace me

맨발로 기억을 거닐다  
날 애싸는 단풍에  
모든 걸 내어주고 살포시 기대본다

I'm walking barefoot through the memories,  
the colored leaves that embrace me  
I'm giving my all as I softly lean on them

-akdong musician (악동뮤지션)

* * *

When Peter wakes up, it's to the sound of soft breathing, in a room that clearly was not part of his apartment, and to the sight of a completely exhausted Tony Stark. Tony's eyes, lined with dark circles that left no question about how fatigued he was, were staring at him quite intently, but Peter wasn't really sure why. He felt like he was swimming through molasses, and that his brain was just being pulled around on a string beside him. It wasn't until Tony held up a glass of water to his mouth and he tried to sit up that the memories started to fly back at him. _Fuck. That's so painful._

"Drink up, kid. Just because you're some super spider doesn't mean that you shouldn't take care of yourself. Especially after... whatever this is you went through." Tony let him hold onto the glass and took a step back. "I would ask you why Karen didn't immediately alert me of your situation as soon as it happened, but I already know the answer." He gave Peter a wry smile. "I really ought to hire your Filipino friend… Well, your other Filipino friend, sometime in the future. That kid is way too competent at hacking my tech."

As soon as he felt a little more hydrated and a little more present in his own mind, Peter leaned back against the pillow—definitely more comfortable than anything that was provided in a hospital—that was behind him and tried to soak in the situation around him. On the small table by his side, there was a familiar set of keys. _May's keys._ There was a nice stream of warm sunlight settling over his legs from the window across the room. Directly under the window was a small sofa—once again, more comfortable than any seating that would be in any hospital—with someone sprawled out on it.

He stared at the person for a good minute before realizing it was Emmy sprawled out on it, the source of the soft, rhythmic breathing he noticed when he first regained consciousness. _No wonder why he said other Filipino friend._ She was wearing clothes that probably were not hers, considering how loose they looked and the _Stark Industries_ logo that dominated the front of the sweatshirt. _I guess Karen really did call for help. I wonder how Emmy was able to order her to..._

Tony probably noticed him staring at the girl that was asleep on the other side of the room, and almost like he could read his mind, answered his thoughts. "If you're wondering how your friend was able to command Karen, as someone that's not you or me, despite you _disabling_ the automatic alert that's supposed to signal me when you're _injured_ ," Tony gave him a pointed look, "or in danger… Well, lucky for you, you and Ned didn't dig hard enough into the code to get rid of all the protections. Just enough was left for Karen to override your edits with a command if your stats were bad enough. I've already gone back in and fixed things, so an outsider can't control anything anymore. And so that _you_ can't mess with it anymore."

Peter flushed at the rebuke, but didn't know how to respond. Everything that came to mind would probably make him sound like a senseless kid if it came out of his mouth. They looked at each other in an uncomfortable silence for a few more seconds, before Peter sighed and just nodded, not really knowing what exactly he was agreeing to—being babied again? losing independence again? or really just having someone watching out for him?—too achy and tired to fight for anything in his current state. He turned and looked around the room again to try to avoid Tony's intense stare. "What time is it?"

"It's currently 10AM. Monday morning. I got to you a little past 1AM, so it's only been about 10 hours since this all went down. You're in the facility up-state." _I thought the room looked a little familiar…_ Peter nodded again.

Realizing that Peter wasn't going to talk about the situation without some prodding, Tony pulled up a chair that was in the corner of the room and placed it next to the bed before sitting in it. "So are you going to explain what happened last night?"

"...I was trying to stop a robbery. I thought that there was only two guys at first, but I got blindsided by a third guy who came out of nowhere and stabbed me. The police were already there, so I just webbed them down so they could take care of them. I…" Peter paused for a second, seeing in hindsight how thoughtless the next thing he was going to have to say would be. "I was close to home already, so I just headed there… I didn't know how bad it was until I was basically home, and May was at work so…"

"And why didn't you ask for help?"

"I did!"

"Yeah, from a kid who is not in any way qualified or trained to patch up a human being bleeding from a stab wound on her floor…" They both gave a quick glance to the girl who was so deep in sleep that she hadn't stirred at all since they'd started talking. "I'm asking why didn't you ask _me_ for help. Or your hot aunt."

Cringing internally at the 'hot aunt,' comment, Peter just brushed it off and continued. "Like I said, she was at work. I didn't want to bother her. I didn't want to bother you." _I didn't want to be a burden..._

"It's better that you bother me at this point. Cause if you're not bothering me, then you're probably dead. I'm sure May feels exactly the same way." Tony sighed, looking a lot older than his age. "I hope you realize how stupid this was."

"Yes, sir…"

"Even if you didn't bleed out, you wouldn't have healed correctly. When we took a look at you, everything wasn't aligned quite right inside you. You are extremely lucky that Dr. Cho is as good as she is, or you would have had some fucked up muscles."

Peter winced at the comment. "I… didn't realize that."

"Obviously." Tony raised his eyebrow at him, then quirked his head in Emmy's direction. "You're also lucky that your little friend over there seems to have more brains than you. As soon as I was alerted of your situation, Karen also immediately let me know that _she_ was the one that called me. And beyond that, if I'd gotten there a second later, you would have been waking up in a hospital. She was literally about to press dial on her phone to call 911 when I made it to her room. And for good reason."

Closing his eyes, Peter tried to lean back, even though he was already fully supine, wishing he would be swallowed up by the bed. "I wouldn't have blamed her if she did."

"You've got to grow up kid." Peter almost flinched at the harsh tone Tony took on, but Tony stared at him patiently until his eyes were open and staring back at him. Tony softened at the hurt, watery look in his eyes. "Peter. I know that you want to be all-adult and independent and this super-spider… but there are people that are here to help you. That _want_ to help you. And knowing when you need to ask for help is part of growing up." Tony shot him another wry smile. "A part that even I haven't gotten down."

Peter turned his head towards the window and tried to swallow back the tears that were threatening to fall. "I'll do better next time, sir."

"I'll hold you to that. I'll leave you alone for now. Think about this some more. Don't think we're done with this conversation yet though, we're still going to talk about the fact that a _third_ person accidentally discovered your Spider alter-ego." Satisfied with Peter's nod in response, Tony stood from the chair he was sitting in and made his way out of the room.

* * *

Peter sat in silence for about an hour after that, his mind running far too fast for him to be able to try to sleep or rest. He knew internally, on some level, even while he was trying to get home last night, that his actions were irresponsible. That getting Emmy involved was irresponsible. That all the disabled functions of his suit and the limitations he'd forced Ned to place on Karen were irresponsible. But he'd _still_ done all of it. And because of what? Did he just want to prove that he could handle everything on his own? Or was he really just worried that his troubles were too trivial to lean on others for? That it wasn't worth bothering anyone else, taking up their time, to help him? It probably was a combination of everything, if he was really honest with himself.

It was just a lot. He knows that he's meant to be Spider-Man, that this is what he was meant to do with his life. That, even if he'd never asked to be bitten by that spider, it turned out to be what gave him his purpose. And the chance that it might be taken away from him _again_ , not even that long after it was taken from him the first time… He just couldn't let that happen.

But he's been slipping up _so_ much recently. Aside from this, and even being caught by Emmy, there were so many other small mistakes. Running out of web fluid mid-patrol. Ending up at the wrong locations. Actually swinging into objects. And then, even though he'd been doing better after the _Incident_ and actually resting up more, _this_ happened.

He got hurt, which isn't unsurprising. It's part of the lifestyle. What he did after that though? Why in the world did he run to someone that was in no way prepared to help him? Emmy is smart, and she's brave, but she's not a doctor. She's not a nurse. Where was his mind? Why was he so worried about calling Tony for help? He probably would have been healed faster, and it would have saved the trauma that he no doubt forced onto Emmy.

If she didn't order Karen to call Tony, he could have _died._ Just because he wanted to prove he was capable. Just because he thought he'd be a burden.

Before he could sink any further into his sorrows, Peter heard the sudden change in breathing from the girl on the sofa, signaling her awakening. Peter looked over at her as she reached up for her glasses on the sill of the window and shifted to sit up. Emmy rubbed at her eyes, yawning and trying to blink the sleep away. Random parts of her hair were either flattened or sticking up, but looked soft and freshly washed. _Right. She probably had to shower to... wash all my blood off..._

Once she put her glasses on, she immediately made eye contact with Peter.

They didn't speak—didn't move, didn't _breathe_ —for what felt like an eternity, but was probably not more than a few seconds. Peter just didn't know what to do. _What do you say to someone that was about to watch you bleed to death?_

After those seconds passed though, Emmy was up in blur and shuffling across the room. She stopped at the side of his bed, glancing over his form before throwing her arms around his neck, careful not to make contact with his torso and not to jostle him around. "I thought you were going to _die_ , Petey." She croaked out, voice a little hoarse.

Peter's eyes watered at the broken sound of her voice. He wrapped his arms around her as best as he could in the position they were in, feeling her own tears fall onto him. "I'm alright Em. Thanks to you."

Emmy didn't pull away from him. "I didn't know what to do… I know… You said not to call… You… I thought I was going to watch you die! You were bleeding so much." Peter could feel her tears soaking his hair and the pillow behind him.

"You did the right thing. I'm sorry I did that to you Em."

"Petey, I was so scared."

"...I was too."

He wasn't sure how much time passed while they were in that position, both of them crying. His wound was probably in a better shape than it was when he'd first woken up, probably almost healed because Emmy was basically leaning on him and it wasn't causing him any discomfort. She'd taken her glasses off at some point, placing them by his pillow as the tears spilled from her eyes, and she was still periodically letting out broken sobs. She didn't even notice the sound of the door opening, still clinging to him while he focused his gaze on May and Pepper as they entered the room.

May walked up next to Emmy, placing her hand on the girl's head and running it through her hair. "Hey, sweetie, why don't you go get something to eat with Pepper?"

Peter loosened his arms, and let Emmy slowly unwind herself from their embrace. She blinked at him a few times with red eyes, then turned her attention to May, who pulled her into her arms. "Okay." She said quietly. Once May let go of her, she reached for her glasses at Peter's side without looking at him and then went to Pepper's side and just stared out the door, rubbing at her eyes.

Pepper put a hand on Emmy's shoulder and then looked at both Peter and May. "We'll see you in a bit." May nodded at her, and then she ushered Emmy out the door.

"I don't think I've seen that girl cry since she was ten…" May moved to sit in the chair that Tony occupied earlier after bringing it closer to his bed. "She must have been really terrified."

Peter squeezed his eyes shut, knowing it was true. Emmy really didn't cry much, and the last time May saw her cry—when her parents announced their divorce to her and her sister, and her dad was yelling so loud that May and Ben actually went to check on them, and they ended up bringing over a sobbing Emmy while everything cooled down—was the last time he saw her cry as well. "Yeah… it was really bad."

"Imagine my surprise when, as soon as my shift ends, I get a call from Tony Stark telling me that he had sent someone over to bring me to my nephew. I told them 'Why would I need someone to bring me to Peter? He's supposed to be at home, sleeping.' And he tells me, 'He's been injured. He's here at our facility.'" She paused, breathing deeply and trying to gather herself before continuing. "He said 'Your neighbor, an Emmy Cruz, called me for help.' I said 'Why would Emmy call you for help?'" She paused again, breathing even more sharply than before. "And he replies, 'Because he was bleeding on the floor of her room."

Peter opened his eyes to look at her. May didn't look livid or upset, she mostly just looked tired. _And scared._

"I've already talked to her. Found out how _she_ found out you were Spider-Man. And that you ended up bleeding in her room, mostly as a last-ditch option," May shifted to hold his hand. "I… just want to know why you didn't call Tony right away. Why you didn't call _me?_ "

"I… didn't realize I was injured as badly as I was. And… I… didn't want to bother you guys."

May stared at him in disbelief. "Peter. Your well-being will never be a bother. You _have_ to know that."

"I do." _Now._

"You don't have to do all of this alone, Peter. There are a lot of people that care about you, that will do anything to make your life easier and happier," May squeezed his hand tighter. "I know that you want to prove to us all that you can be a hero, but we already know that you can. What you need to do now, is prove to us that you know you can be a responsible hero. That you know when you need to ask for help."

Peter nodded slowly, squeezing her hand in response. "I swear I'll work on this. I'll be more thoughtful."

"You better be, kid." May let go of his hand and moved to stroke his hair. "You scared a lot of people last night in a situation that could have been avoided."

"I know."

May kept on stroking his hair absentmindedly before she sighed. "I'm not going to lie. I sometimes wish I could stop you from doing all this. _Especially_ now that this happened. But I know that I'd never be able to," She cradled his cheek in her hand. "So you just have to promise me that you won't pull something like this on me again."

"I promise."

"And as much as I dislike Tony Stark for enabling this lifestyle for you, you've got to promise that you'll ask for his help in the future too, when you need it."

"I promise that too."

"Good." May pinched his cheek, and he immediately scrunched up his nose in response. Some of the weight on her shoulders seemed to lift at his expression. She placed a quick peck on the cheek that she pinched before leaning back in her seat. "You know, I thought you just had a crush on Emmy. That that was the reason why you seemed to be talking to her more. Not that she found your secret identity."

Peter flushed at her words. "No, I'm kind of sure I don't like her like that. I honestly even had a whole inner battle trying to figure out how I feel about her the other day. She's just been really… helpful."

May raised an eyebrow at him. "Helpful how?"

"I dunno really." Peter shrugged. "It's just nice talking to her, I guess."

"What did you figure that you felt for her then?"

Remembering Emmy's echo of his ' _Do you trust me?'_ in a much more dire situation, Peter didn't hesitate to answer. "I trust her."

May snorted. "Well, I'd hope so, considering all that you put her through last night."

* * *

He ends up talking to May for a good hour, finding out that they'd be staying there for the night and that Tony has taken care of the state he'd left Emmy's room in. Emmy was also staying with them since her mom was still away at her sister's anyway, and wouldn't be back until the next evening. He was feeling a bit anxious thinking the next conversation he was going to have with her, already drained from every other interaction he'd had during the day, but knew that it was necessary.

Peter didn't have to dwell on his anxieties for that long because, almost as soon as his thoughts focused on them, Emmy poked her head through the door. May turned towards her and beckoned her in, while standing up and moving to leave the room without making an excuse. _It'd be pointless anyway, all of us know that we need to talk._

As Emmy settled down into the chair by his bed, Peter noted that her hair had been tamed and that she looked a little more awake, though he could still see faint dark circles surrounding her eyes.

"Hey Peter." She said, with a crooked smile.

"Hey Emmy." He responded softly.

"So," She was swinging her legs a little bit back and forth. "I should be kind of mad at you."

Peter nodded. "You should. I wouldn't blame you if you were."

"You put me in a terrible spot last night."

"I did."

"I wouldn't have been able to do anything. You weren't even letting me call for help."

"I know."

"And I was so scared!"

"I… know."

She didn't speak for a minute, looking down at her hands in her lap, before refocusing on him. "The thing is though, I'm not mad. Is that weird? I mean, you put me in a situation where I could have been watching you _die_ , so it probably is weird. But I honestly just feel relieved."

"You're… not mad?"

"No, I'm not," Emmy shook her head. "I wanted to be. I probably _was,_ for a second. Mostly when I had to explain to Tony Stark why I knew who Spider-Man was, why he was bleeding out on my bedroom floor, and why I was the one that called him for help using your personal tech." She shrugged. "But now, I'm just so glad that you're alright."

Peter was speechless. _This_ was not how he imagined their conversation would go. He thought she'd be yelling at him or, at the very least, upset with him.

Emmy stared at him, before continuing. "You know, the day I asked you to go ice skating with me, I was thinking about how weird our relationship is. That we went from sort-of-friends-that-never-talk, to me knowing one of your deepest secrets and talking a lot. And then I was thinking, well, I have no idea what's gonna happen going forward, but I know Petey is just _so_ good, and he's always trying to _be_ good, so hey? Why don't I just try to help him when I can. Now, I didn't know I'd be helping you with _this_ ," she wrinkled her nose, "but it's not like I could suddenly go back on my decision when I was covered in your blood."

Peter looked at her in wonder, completely in shock at the dedication she was displaying. "I honestly don't know what to say, Em."

She flashed him a smile. "You don't have to really say anything. I'm basically just letting you know that I decided I was going to be here for you and that, while this was fairly extreme, it was part of that." She tilted her head to the side. "Just, uh, next time, please only rely on me for injuries that can be covered with a Snoopy band-aid. Leave the big injuries for the professionals."

Peter laughed. "I promise."

Emmy's smile widened, her dimples becoming more prominent, as she held out a pinky. Peter glanced at her hand and immediately wrapped a pinky around hers, shaking their hands in a promise. Once they let go, Emmy moved to hold his hand, squeezing it tightly, and Peter fought back a blush at the contact. "I'm really so glad you're okay Petey, I don't know what I would have done if you weren't."

"I'm glad too. And thankful that you were smarter than me last night." Peter paused. "Hey Em. Do you realize you've been calling me Petey?"

She tilted her head a little bit, thinking for a few seconds. "I guess I have, huh? I haven't called you that in years! Do you not like it anymore? Should I stop?"

"No," Peter shook his head. "It's fine. I kind of missed it. No one's really called me that since Uncle Ben passed away."

Emmy gave him a soft look. "Well, then I'll call you Petey." She smiled sheepishly. "When I remember to at least!"

* * *

After talking to Emmy, Pepper and May came back in with a light soup for Peter. Exhausted after the heavy conversations he'd had, he ends up drifting in-and-out of sleep for the rest of the evening after eating. Even though his wound was physically healed, he could still feel a dull ache and mentally he was still a little all over the place.

Peter wakes at almost midnight, blinking drowsily at the darkened room. As he moves to stretch his arms, he feels something constricting his right hand. Following the sight of his arm down his side, he blushes the slightest amount at what he sees.

Emmy had pushed the chair almost flush against the bed and was currently holding his hand, asleep with her head leaning on the bed at his side, pressed face-down into the blanket. _No wonder May thinks something is going on._

As soon as the bit of embarrassment passes, he's suddenly overcome with worry once he realizes that she's probably going to be in pain if she sleeps the whole night in that position. Carefully slipping his hand out of hers, he swings himself to the side of the bed she's not on, and quietly walks around 'til he's by her chair. Sliding one arm under her knees and the other around her back, he gently lifts her off of the chair, and snickers when he sees that she fell asleep with her glasses on and has imprints of them on parts of her face.

Easily supporting her, he makes his way over to the couch she was sleeping on earlier. While it would be small for even him, she is short enough that there is room to spare while she's fully laying down. He gingerly lets her down, cautious of waking her—not that she _would_ wake, considering all that she's slept through already—and pulls off her glasses, putting them on the sill of the window above. Stepping back, Peter looks at her, peacefully sleeping, and can't help but think, ' _Something's changing.'_

* * *

 **a/n:** time and fallen leaves (시간과 낙엽) - akdong musician (악동뮤지션) is what I listened to while writing this chapter

Anxiety is not a quick fix. That's what I focused in on in this chapter. I honestly don't know how I've been able to keep writing so fast, and I'm not promising that this is going to go on forever. (I may or not be spending all the time I should be working on things for school writing this story so...)

Thank you again for the new reviews, faves, and follows! Please let me know what you think, and inspire me to keep going. (:


	7. no, like a cat

어느 날 우연히 널 만났죠  
보고 싶어 그렇게 사랑이 왔죠  
아무 생각 없이 너만 볼래요  
강아지처럼 아니 고양이처럼

one day, I randomly met you  
then I missed you, and that's how love came  
I only want to look at you, without thinking  
like a puppy, no, like a cat

-suran ft. crush

* * *

Unlike the last few "afters," they've had post-interaction, this "after," has a huge immediate shift. Now they seem to always be in each other's orbit. As much as May seems to insinuate that it's happening for romantic reasons, both of them are really quite sure it's not. There was just such a comfort in their presence in each other's life, particularly for Peter. Having someone else know about his life as Spider-Man that he could talk to was probably the biggest draw he had to her. He could _trust_ her with so much.

While it was true that both Ned and May were very much aware of his Spider-Man alter-ego, Ned was often too caught up in trying to be his Guy-in-the-Chair (which he was… when it was necessary), and May was always just too worried (understandably). Emmy, despite the bleeding-out-in-her-bedroom ordeal, was very true to her words. She didn't seem to be mad at him, and she didn't fuss over him. She was just… _there_.

At first, he is almost disappointed in the lack of reaction. How could she possibly be so nonchalant about everything? Especially after she's seen the bad side of it? On a particularly eventless night, he even ends his patrol early and, out of boredom, ends up in her room again, in his suit, and all she does is put a Snoopy band-aid on his suit on the spot where his wound was and then ask him about his day. But then, he soon takes solace in the easy banter he has with her. Literal _weeks_ pass before he realizes that they've been hanging out almost every day. Even more weeks pass before someone else finally comments on the change.

"So Peter," Ned started, with his chin resting in his palm, expression the picture of a detective in the middle of an interrogation. "I've noticed you've been hanging out with Emmy a lot recently."

"Hm?" Peter looked up from the book he was skimming over for decathlon. They didn't have any competitions coming up, so the team was just hanging around the auditorium on their designated practice day doing some half-assed studying. The last time they didn't utilize their practice space during a free week, the Improv club decided that they would take over that time slot, and the next week they came back, it was to the sight of a bunch of people covered in feathers and clicking around the room. It proved beneficial for MJ's distress sketch-book, but not for their practice. "Yeah. Well we _are_ neighbors. And she knows about my 'work.'" The second sentence is muttered almost inaudibly to the other occupants of the room.

"But you've _always_ been neighbors, and you definitely were _not_ hanging out this much before. Dude, you barely even talked in the last couple of years, until that day."

"Mm, I dunno." Peter shrugged. "We just ended up talking more."

"You're not dating or anything are you?" Ned leaned forward, into his space, with his eyes wide open.

"Penis Parker?! Dating?" Flash chimed in from across the room. He started bounding over like he believed someone actually wanted him there. "No way. You're talking about that girl we saw at that boba shop right? _No. Chance._ "

"You sure were convinced something was going on in that moment though." Ned said, not even looking in Flash's direction.

"Well, I was just in complete disbelief. I mean, who would want to ask Peter Parker to walk her home? It's not like he's Spider-Man!" Peter groaned internally. _It's always so weird that he has such a huge crush on my alter-ego._ "Everything made sense when I found out that they're just neighbors."

"Thanks for the input Flash, now please," Ned made a shooing motion with his hands, but still didn't look at him "go away!"

"Parker is going have a miserable day on our field trip in two weeks," Flash said, ignoring Ned and plopping himself into the seat right next to them. "Not only are we going to find out he's _not_ actually an intern at Stark Industries, we're also going to find out just how much he's _not_ capable of interacting with any girls."

 _Oh, shit. It totally slipped my mind that we're going to the Tower for that STEM_ _presentation thing. "_ Flash, I have a freaking ID from my internship that you've _seen_. And what are you even talking about with that second part?"

"You could have made that ID yourself," Flash smirked. "And your friend's school is going on the same day."

 _What even, how does he know what sch—_

"Flash Thompson, did you internet stalk the poor girl?!" Cindy cried out from her seat a few feet away, turning to look at him with a glare. "You are _so_ creepy!"

"No!" He squawked indignantly, while he was gradually flushing red. "They mentioned it whe—"

"They did not!" Abe called out from his place on the floor, pushing off the book that was covering his face to join the conversation.

"Yeah, Eugene." MJ panned from her perch on the stage. "They actually didn't say which school they were from. Even _I_ still don't know."

Peter frowned at the commotion. "Why were you even looking her up?"

"I wasn't, I just _happened_ upon the information!" He paused. "...while on the internet."

"That sounds even creepier than just admitting it."

"I am not creepy, Cindy!" Flash huffed, still red in the face. "Let's get back to the real point here, we're going to see that Penis Parker here can't get a girl next Thursday."

Sally finally joined in the fray. "God, Flash he already said they're not even dating. Why are you so obsessed with Peter?"

"He's just sad because Peter actually has a friend that's a girl and every girl that _he,"_ Cindy tilted her head to indicate she was talking about Flash, "talks to immediately vacates the premises."

"Because he's a creep," MJ chimed in.

Cindy nodded. "Because he's a creep."

"And a dick."

"And a dick." Cindy parroted again.

Flash stood up abruptly, almost knocking over the chair he was occupying and stomped his way to the door. "Who cares about what you losers think about me, I didn't want to talk to you guys anyway."

None of the other members graced him with a response, all of their daily quotas for dealing with him long-drained. Sally sighed as soon as he was fully out of view. "You know, I was pretty bummed I couldn't hang out with you guys that day, but any moment away from Flash is honestly a blessing."

Peter echoed her sigh, slouching into his seat. "So very true."

"So are all of you going to the field trip?" Abe asked while rolling onto his front and leaning his head against his arms. "I hope so!" His face fell into a frown. "I heard the alternative is staying with _Coach Wilson_ the whole day."

"Nope. Hard pass." Cindy grimaced. "Not that I didn't even want to go, but that really sells it for me."

Ned nodded, a similar grimace on his face. "Yeah, I missed that one field trip last year because I forgot to get my permission slip signed, and got stuck with him. He likes to put on old rom-coms. And he _cries_. Like _ugly_ cries. It's so disturbing, really."

All of them shudder at the image.

It takes a few seconds before their minds are cleansed of the picture Ned painted, but MJ turns to address Peter as soon as they are all collected. "Do you think Stark is actually going to make an appearance?"

Peter shrugs. "Not sure. I think more of the lower-level scientists and employees usually handle this stuff, though."

MJ considers his statement for a bit before nodding. "Makes sense. They probably don't want any weird encounters with his fans," she quirks her head towards Ned. "Like our Neddy-boy over here."

Sally paled at her words. "Oh, or even worse! _Flash!_ " She makes a fake gagging motion. "Could you imagine if he ever ran into Spider-Man?"

Cindy snickered. "Immediate restraining order!"

Abe full out laughs. "He'd probably be arrested."

"God, I don't even want to imagine." Peter groaned.

"Can we burn his permission slip or something?" Ned said wistfully. "I really don't want to deal with him there."

Cindy made an exaggerated sad face. "If only!" They all sighed.

* * *

Following some hours in the lab just recording measurements, Peter goes on patrol for a small portion of the evening. Unfortunately for him, the Baby Monitor Protocol is back into motion at some capacity, and every time he goes on for too long or some of his stats starts to fall, an alert is immediately sent out to Tony, who then basically trolls him until he taps out for the night. It wasn't that big of a disappointment though, because he had a bunch of food stuffed into his backpack and it was a Friday night, so he could just relax without the worries of waking up for school looming over his head.

After greeting May, who was seated on the couch, just flipping through the channels, he puts his bag down gingerly in his room, careful not to jostle the contents too much, and then runs to take a quick shower. It hadn't been that long since he got the food, but cold fries were not exactly that appealing. He didn't even bother combing his hair once he was done, and just shoved on whatever shirt and sweats he found in his 'clean' pile before extricating the takeout from Shake Shack from his backpack, complete with a shake that he'd poured into his steel water bottle. It was a bit of an ordeal, changing multiple times in and out of his suit to get the food, swing close to home, and then actually enter the building like a normal person, but Shake Shack was always worth it.

Once everything was in order, he made his way to his window cradling the food like it was a child, slipped out onto the fire escape and walked the few steps over to Emmy's window, and knocked on it rhythmically. She was lying on her front on her bed, laptop at her head playing some video on YouTube. She didn't even startle at his presence, used to it after the weeks of him appearing at her window, knocking the same way every time to signal it was him.

She stands up on her bed to slide the window open and grins at him. "Hey Petey!"

Smiling back at her, he replied. "Hey Em," He holds out the food towards her to free his hands. "I got the food."

"Woah, Shake Shack?" Taking the items from him, she moves to the side so he can step in. "Thanks Peter, but that's so expensive!" She frowns at him, before sitting back down on the bed.

Sitting next to her, he takes the food back and removes it from the takeout bag. "It's fine, I was craving some," Peter shrugs, then grabs both of the containers of fries. "And if you don't want to eat your share, I'd be happy to—"

"No!" Emmy laughed, snatching one of the fry containers from him.

Like a well-oiled machine, they smoothly started the routine that they'd formed over the last few weeks. They swiftly maneuvered around her room, gathering blankets and pillows from her bed and the stack at the foot of it, arranging them on the floor. Whoever took care of the remnants of the bleeding-episode he'd had in her room replaced the beddings, pillows, rug, and even brought in more blankets to add to her collection, all of the highest quality. Once all of the floor was covered, they moved the food and her laptop onto the ground and flopped down in the middle of the blanket haven.

They didn't speak for a while, happily scarfing down the pile of fast food and continuing the video of _Buzzfeed Unsolved_ that Emmy was watching before he came over. When the episode was over, and all the food was completely devoured, they both just buried themselves deep into the blankets to block out the increasing cold of the room.

"Hey, is your school going to that STEM seminar at the tower?"

"Mm," Emmy dazedly replied, before really thinking about his question. "Yeah, we are! How'd you know that?"

"My school is going the same day too."

"Really? Oh, that'll be fun!" Emmy said with a smile, which quickly shifted into a pout. "...or hopefully it will, I hate all these career presentation things."

"Why?"

"It just feels like it brings out all the stress in me," She said dismissively, shrugging as much as she could while lying down. "I honestly don't know what I want to do in the future, y'know?"

"I guess," Peter conceded, knowing that these bouts of unsurety hit him often as well. "but you shouldn't worry so much, you'll figure it out."

"Whatever Peter," Emmy stuck her tongue out at him. "You can say that because you're amazing," Peter sputtered at her words. "I like… just… exist."

Peter frowned at her. "What are you talking about? You're smart. You're good at basically everything you try."

"I'm not that smart. Certainly not like you. I just get by." She said in a wistful tone. She closed her eyes, but he could feel the resigned anxiety rolling off of her. "And I'm _okay_ at _some_ things I try, I've never been outstanding at anything."

 _She… really doesn't believe in herself._ "You're selling yourself too short, Em. I've never met anyone as willing to try new things as you. Or as willing to work hard to get better at those things."

He'd seen personally how much of herself she'd give to perfecting her hobbies and schoolwork in recent weeks. How she spent hours studying because she didn't really get Calculus, and aced a test because of it. How she practiced playing trumpet non-stop, almost forgetting to go home, so she could get a solo. How she learned full on sentences in Korean because it made the elderly shopowners at the local market smile. How she researched proper plant care and fretted over her succulent like it was her own child, and how he could even hear her talking to it in the mornings as they got ready to go to school.

"Mm…" He could tell that she didn't really believe him.

"Hey," Peter scooted closer to her and poked her cheek. "I can tell you don't believe me. But you shouldn't worry too much, you really will figure everything out. And you're going to do great at whatever you choose," He hovered pretty close to her, laughing as she scrunched up her face and swatted his hand away. "You know, you're amazing too." He shot her a smile.

Emmy flushed at the compliment, blinking at him in a bit of awe before softly smiling back. "...Thanks Petey."

* * *

Peter drifted off to sleep after they spent hours talking about random topics and watching more episodes of Unsolved. He was positioned laying opposite from her, about a foot away, but with his head facing hers. Her laptop was closed and above their heads. She still had her glasses on, so she could see his features fairly clearly. _He looks so soft when he's sleeping… How is this the person that goes around fighting criminals in Queens?_

Emmy was surprised at how comfortable he seemed to be. She'd figured that he would be a light sleeper, considering all that he'd been through and what he did as his alter-ego, but he didn't shift an inch even as she moved a little bit closer to him. From this vantage, she could see how his eyebrows appeared to be pointing in every direction, how dense his eyelashes were, and how peaceful he looked. He looked more like the elementary school version of him she'd met, when he had fewer worries on his shoulders and less responsibilities.

 _I know that my mom and May are both okay with us hanging out so much, but I don't think either of them would approve of him falling asleep in my room._ May wasn't shocked at all by the turn their relationship had taken, she even found out that they'd been going into each other's room via window and didn't bat an eyelash. And her own mother's reaction actually stunned them all. Despite not being around them as often, since she really was at work at almost all hours, she was so calm the moment that she opened Emmy's door and saw Peter in the room. All she did was ask Peter if he was going to stay for dinner and, at both of their blushes, say that she saw this coming and then _closed_ the door.

Their guardian's teasings, however, probably wouldn't extend to sleepovers so easily, even if it was as innocent as what was happening. _It's not like he'd ever like me like that though, considering how gorgeous and amazing the girls that he's liked in the past were…_ She thought about Liz, and the fact that she even liked him back enough to agree to go with him to Homecoming. After Emmy found out about Peter's secret, Ned excitedly gushed to her about the events from the past school year, including that insane night of the dance.

Emmy was still quite sure about how she felt for him. Before that moment that he'd bled out on her floor, she was certain that she didn't like him, and she was very certain that that still held true. It was even more certain that _he_ didn't like _her_. Seeing him so often though added a layer of fog over everything. She was so sure there was nothing romantic about her feelings, but that want to hang out with him, to talk to him was making things so cloudy. She felt slightly embarrassed at how giddy she would get when she'd hear his signature knock on her window.

As muddled as her mind could get, though, about all that was going on, Emmy wasn't going to take this situation for granted. The fact that Peter trusted her enough to be this vulnerable in front of her, to talk to after stressful days and to freaking fall asleep in her room? She knows that it hasn't been that long since he was barely sleeping at all—and that there are still days when he gets by on barely an hour of sleep—the whole catalyst of their renewed and improved friendship in the first place. It said so much that, even with Emmy knowing so many of the secrets that he keeps under lock and key, he still felt safe enough to fall asleep in her presence.

It made her feel warm. The trust he had for her, the support that he willingly accepted from her. Even though she wasn't sure what career she wanted to pursue, what college she wanted to go to, or what her purpose was, she was sure that she liked this warmth. That helping Peter believe in his purpose made her happy. Maybe that was a little strange, and it definitely was not what she'd imagined she'd be thinking before everything went down, but she didn't really mind.

 _I do kind of mind that I keep feeling like I want to be closer to him though…_ Emmy shook her head at the thought, and moved back away from Peter. This was exactly the territory she didn't want to step in. While it wouldn't be horrible or anything to have a crush on Peter, what would definitely be horrible would be being rejected by him and potentially losing all the progress they'd made. Trying to push out the negative thoughts that were starting to filter into her head, Emmy took off her glasses, placed them near her laptop and then allowed the fatigue in her body to settle in and help her fall asleep.

* * *

When Peter woke up, the sun was barely starting to rise, and light was slowly leaking into the room. It was still that odd blueish-gray shade that occurs before the sun and moon actually trade off for the morning. Before he noticed any of that though, there was something more immediately in his line of sight as he opened his eyes. Or _someone._

At some point in the night, Emmy had shifted a little bit closer to him—probably to steal all of his warmth, due to her eternal cold-state. He was lying slightly on his side facing her, and she was almost mirroring him, but with part of her face squished into the blanket below her. She was also clutching at one of his arms with both of her hands. He should have blushed at the situation, or felt a little bit embarrassed, but all he could think about was how peaceful she looked.

She was breathing so easily, like all the insecurities she'd laid out earlier were just nothing. Her hair was in a simple braid, but seemed to be escaping it and going in directions of its own volition. Her cheek that was pressed into the blanket was rosy, and she'd occasionally scrunch up her nose like a rabbit. Almost like he was in a trance, Peter was glad he caught himself as he was about to reach out to poke her cheek. _She looks so soft like this._

Peter hadn't realized how little she thought of herself, of what she was capable of doing, until she touched on it last night. It was an honest surprise to him because she seemed to move through her life with such confidence, and she dealt with him and his _situation_ with complete surety. Peter was absolutely certain that she would be able to convince anyone in the world to do anything she wanted, because she was that good at talking and making people believe in her. She might not realize how useful that was, but after working in the lab, Peter _knew_ how important that was. A bunch of the people at the top of the chain were not necessarily the smartest, or most talented, but they were generally the most tenacious and charming.

And the best person there wasn't the one the genius that had a Ph.D before he was twenty—that dude was actually kind of a dick—it was the old lady that didn't even study chemistry until she was well into her forties. One of his favorite moments was when the group of cocky, young scientists from elite universities were completely eviscerated and proven wrong by an offhanded comment from an almost seventy year old lady that picked up chemistry for fun.

He was still very very sure that he didn't like her. His feelings for her definitely didn't resemble his past feelings for Liz, or any of the other crushes he's had. But their relationship had grown so relaxed, so comfortable. They saw each other _so much_ , and on days they didn't, he actually found himself waiting until they could. He was certain he didn't like her like _that_ , but sometimes it would get confusing because of how much they had began to rely on each other. Was it just a _want_ to be around her? Or maybe he _did_ like her? _I still think I don't._

He knew how determined Emmy was to be there for him, to support him. She did it with no hesitation, and sometimes he couldn't understand it. How could she be so willing to stand by him when she knows the terrifying possibilities? What could happen to her? When she's seen what happened to _him?_ It was like it didn't even matter to her, and he didn't get it. Especially because her dedication to him was aimed at _Peter Parker_ more than it was at Spider-man.

It was sweet, and he almost selfishly craved it. Even though he couldn't always comprehend it. Even though it made him nervous for her. He didn't want it to stop.

Guilt overwhelmed him the first moment that particular thought entered his mind. How could he possibly feel like that? How could he wish for her to continue this odd relationship where she was the only one giving and he was just taking? But now there was something he could do for her, and it really was basically what she was doing for him. He was going to be there for her, to make her believe in herself. To realize how amazing she was.

At soon as he made that resolution to himself, Emmy shifted a little closer to him, but was still asleep. Their only contact point was still her hands clasped around his arm, but her face was close enough that he could feel the puffs of her breathing against his face. _Now_ he could feel the embarrassment spreading over him. the fact that he'd actually fallen asleep in her room was one thing, he wasn't really that stunned anymore by the fact that he trusted her that much, but the intimacy of it all didn't hit him until he realized how close their faces were.

Peter started to pull his arm out her grasp, but the movement actually made her clutch a little bit tighter before slowly opening her eyes. She blinked sleepily at him, not really comprehending the situation. After a few more drowsy seconds passed by, understanding seemed to dawn on her and a flush to match the one on her squished cheek spread across the her face to the other one, but she didn't move away. They both stared at each other in a sort of wonder before a soft smile took over her face. "G' morning Petey."

 _She's so pretty._ An inner panic stirred in Peter at the thought, a matching blush finding its way onto his own face. He was relieved that she wasn't the one with enhanced senses, otherwise she'd be able to hear the rapid beating of his heart. "Morning Emmy."

She closed her eyes again, the flush still dominantly displayed on her face. "'M still sleepy…"

Peter let out a quiet chuckle. "Then sleep more. 's still early, 'n it's Saturday anyway."

"Mm…" Emmy didn't really reply, lost in a haze of sleepiness and an overactive mind.

"Em, why don't you move onto your bed? I should probably go before May realizes I didn't sleep in my room." He said softly. _God, I'd never hear the end of it. Nothing would ever convince her I don't like Emmy if she knew about this._

"...too lazy." She muttered into the blanket.

Peter laughed a little at her. It was clear that she would probably fall back asleep before she'd ever make it onto her bed. He moved to fully shift away from her, finally pulling his arm free from her grasp. He sat up and stretched to shake the fatigue from his body, and Emmy rolled onto her back and opened her eyes lazily to look at him.

He got onto his knees right next to her, and before she could ask him what he was doing, he slipped an arm under her shoulders and knees and picked her up, blankets and all. She squeaked in surprise at the action, eyes opening wide. He stood up with ease and made his way towards her bed, gently placing her on the mattress that was now bathed with the morning sunlight. He stepped back to observe the girl who was staring straight back at him. In the golden rays of sun, her normally black hair was sprinkled with bits of brown. Her face was turned away from the light, but the flush was still featured prominently on it. Peter closed his eyes. _She's really so pretty…_

When he opened his eyes again, he moved to put away everything that was on the ground, placing her glasses and laptop slightly under her bed right below her and folding all the blankets. As soon as he was done, he gave a quick glance at her to see that she was breathing softly and her eyes were shut. Quietly and softly, he stepped onto the foot of her bed and slid the window open, trying to get to their shared fire escape with as little fuss as possible. While he was sliding her window back shut, he heard her call out in a drowsy voice. "See ya later Petey."

He tried to ignore the quickening of his heart as he slipped back into his room.

* * *

 **a/n:** 러브스토리 (Love Story) - suran feat. crush is what I listened to while writing this chapter

Thanks for all the new reviews, follows, and favorites!

Thanks in particular to _**Brenaners**_ and _**SheepMeUp**_. To _**Brenaners,**_ I'm grateful for the appreciation of the tone of my story. I love angst, but there's a shortage of adorable, slice-of-life Peter/OC stories, and I just want to bridge that gap. And to _**SheepMeUp,**_ I was so happy to read your review and humbled by the praise. I agree that first-person is a greater vehicle for delving into emotions, but it personally isn't my strong suit haha. I find myself wandering too much when I write in first-person.

Wooo, this chapter was not an easy write y'all. I found myself constantly switching between verb tenses and it was stressing me out so much! They were both smol, confused beans in this chapter. It's becoming an exploration of sorts of a 썸, or some, relationship. Where they're not dating or anything, but they seem like a couple whenever they're together. Also a little more of a look into Emmy's insecurities in this one.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and let me know what you guys think! (:


	8. this city felt so friendly

네가 내 후로  
부쩍 친절한 이 도시가  
날 반겨주는 걸

after the day you came to me  
this city felt so friendly  
it's greeting me

-younha

* * *

The morning leading up to field trip was ridiculously stressful. It was the Friday before the Thanksgiving Break, so everyone was in a frenzy of excitement and anxiety. The teachers had rushed to cram in a bunch of assignments and exams before the break, so everyone was exhausted from a week of studying, evident in the dark circles and overwhelming smell of coffee in the parking lot. The odd state of being half asleep and joy because they got to spend the day not doing schoolwork filled the air.

Filled the air, much like the scent of Axe body spray, in which Flash seemed to fall into a vat of, because they were all smacked in the face by it as soon as he opened his car door. He strolled out arrogantly, like he wasn't the reason they were all stressed—which he was, because he was twenty minutes late and refused to let them leave without him, telling the teacher who'd called him that he would file a complaint or some bullshit like that.

 _It's absolutely amazing that everyone here is so stressed out and it's because of_ _ **one**_ _person._

As they shuffled onto the bus, all the other kids (and teachers) tried to steer clear of Flash because the smell was _that_ strong. The poor soul that ended up next to him—who, surprisingly, was not anyone from decathlon since they all buddied up and stormed through to claim seats—looked miserable and was pinching his nose before Flash even sat down. Flash was near the back of the bus, so none of them would have to deal with him during the ride because they all sat in the front, behind the teachers. Normally, that would be the exact place where students wouldn't want to sit, but it made for an easy escape since: A. They could rush off once they arrived and B. Flash would never sit by the teachers, so easy escape from _him._

"I wonder what they're going to tell us," Cindy said in a tired voice, her head leaning against the window next to her.

"Probably the normal 'Go into STEM if you want money, spiel," Sally muttered, not bothering to open her eyes to look at Cindy who was seated behind her.

"Ugh," Abe groaned, "I get enough of that from my parents."

"Same," Cindy whined. "Like we already go to a science school, it's not like the point _isn't_ being driven in from everywhere, every freaking day."

Ned nodded, agreeing with their sentiments. "I _want_ to go into STEM and I'm tired of the talks."

MJ snorted. "End result, _none_ of us end up in STEM because of their insistence." Cindy snickered at the thought.

"I hope they do something interesting that doesn't just crush our souls," Sally sighed.

"What do you think they're going to do, Peter?" Abe asked, turning towards the boy in question whose head was leaning forward onto the seat in front of him. He drowsily looked across the aisle at Abe.

"I honestly don't know. Some of the people in the lab are involved, but they wouldn't spill what they're doing today."

"We have an insider, but he can't even give us the inside scoop!" Cindy pouted at Peter, before smiling to show him she was just messing around.

"Sorry to disappoint," Peter laughed.

"Try harder next time, Parker." MJ deadpanned, before smirking.

"Will do."

"I wonder how many people will be attending though." Ned said after a few seconds of silence. "Hopefully not too many, I want to actually be able to see things."

"That I actually do know!" Peter replied cheerfully. "Basically, everyone that's going is currently in an AP Physics course that isn't graduating, because they can't exactly bring entire schools in, let alone multiple schools at the same time. There should be less than a hundred of us total, and we're the first batch."

"Oh, that's not too bad then."

"Yeah. Em said only like twenty kids from her school would be going, because there's only twenty of them that aren't seniors taking the class."

" _Ahhh,_ your dearest Emmeline." Ned sighed dramatically, nudging Peter's shoulder.

Peter shot him back an unimpressed stare. "She would kill you if she ever heard you say that."

Ned blinked at him thoughtfully before grimacing. "Yeah, she definitely would."

"Is she forreal coming today?" Cindy chattered excitedly. Peter nodded, and Cindy grinned at the affirmative. "I can't wait to see her!"

"She is. They're probably there already considering how late we left." Peter raised an eyebrow at her. "Are… are you friends or something? Didn't you only see her that one time?"

"I followed her on Instagram that day!" Cindy laughed at his confused face. "We message about Korean dramas and music _all_ the time."

"Ah," Peter nodded slowly. "She does really like Korean stuff. And she talks about how beautiful that one guy is a lot." He said the last bit as he turned to lean against the seat in front of him again.

"That one guy!?" Cindy sputtered indignantly at his wording, knowing who he was talking about because she'd already had multiple fangirl sessions via Instagram DM with Emmy about their mutual bias. "That one guy is complete beauty and perfection and his _name_ is—"

"Calm down, Cindy." MJ patted her shoulder, trying to nip the rant in the bud. "I don't think he meant anything by it. Or maybe he's just a bit jealous that his _dear_ Emmy doesn't talk about how beautiful _he_ is."

Peter gave them both a blank stare. "I just meant nothing by it, I honestly forgot his name."

"Sure, sure." MJ waved him off, and began conversing with Cindy privately.

Their group fell into a lull as the bus continued on, saving their energy for the long day ahead of them. The actual travel there didn't take too long, even with the bouts of heavier traffic they got stuck in.

Luckily, when they arrived, the whole event hadn't really started yet. The other students were already present, but were still bustling around, with the constant buzz of excited chattering filling the room. They were all relieved when the employee that approached them just cheerily checked them in and handed them those "Hello, My Name Is," stickers to write their names on.

After all the formalities were taken care of, they, along with the other students participating were just left in the lobby waiting to be ushered into the auditorium. Peter looked around the room, trying to see if he could spot a familiar face, only to make eye contact with Lily and realize that the group right next to his was from Emmy's school, but without Emmy.

Lily moved to talk to her teacher for a second, who just waved her off with a shrug, then she started walking towards him. "Good morning Peter!"

"Morning Lily," Peter smiled back at her. "Your group looks awfully small…"

"Oh, well there were already only 20 of us that could go, then our friend Ryan got sick, and some people skipped out since the break starts after today." Lily shrugged.

"That makes sense," Peter nodded. "Where's Em?"

"Ah, Lina." Lily beamed. "She's here."

He looked around, not seeing or hearing her within the lobby. "...then _where_ is she?"

"Your class got here super late, you missed the commotion!" She laughed at the puzzled expression that spread over his face. "You'll see her, don't worry."

Before Peter could question her, she skipped away back to her classmates. He didn't have to ponder the situation for long though, because the large doors of the auditorium suddenly swung open and everyone's attention turned to the people walking out, namely Tony, Pepper, and a completely flushed Emmy. They stopped a few steps away from the door, Emmy looking really flustered and embarrassed by the attention. Tony said something to her and she just nodded, then scanned the other people in the room, looking for something. When her eyes landed on him, she smiled widely and waved.

"Peter, she's got something from me to give to you!" Tony called out loudly. Pepper sighed at the volume of his statement and Emmy visibly startled before looking at the two of them again. Tony just started to walk away towards the elevator, but Pepper smiled softly at Emmy and patted her shoulder, then followed Tony.

The buzz that had quieted at the appearance of the power couple started up again, but a bunch of people were staring at him this time. Peter shifted uncomfortably, but quickly smiled as he saw Emmy making her way to him through the crowd.

Emmy was practically on her tip-toes trying to maneuver through, not stopping until she was right in front of him. "Morning Petey!" She beamed at him, her dimples prominently displaying themselves.

"Morning Em," He smiled softly back at her.

"Here's what Mr. Stark wanted me to give to you," Emmy said, stepping closer to him and pressing her right hand flat against his sweater, right under his name tag. Peter furrowed his eyebrows as she pulled her hand away, seeing that she had stuck on another name tag. He tugged on his sweater, angling it so he could see the entirety of the sticker. Reading it upside-down, he realized that below the 'Hello, My Name Is' it said 'Tony's Not-Favorite.'

Peter blankly stared back at her as she giggled. "Thanks." He deadpanned. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he noticed that under her own name tag, she had one that said 'Tony's Favorite.'

"He said it had to be made known." Emmy laughed. Peter kept up his blank stare for a few more seconds before caving in and laughing along with her.

"Why were you with them in the first place?"

"Oh, I wanted to return the clothes from, you know, _that_ day. I figured I'd give it to the receptionist, but low and behold! They actually walked through the lobby!" Emmy's eyes were open wide, her arms flailing a little bit as she told the story. "It was so embarrassing, Petey! I just gave a little wave, but then they came over and _talked_ to me and everyone was staring! I think they noticed how uncomfortable I was," She chuckled sheepishly. "They pulled me into the auditorium and I rambled like an idiot thanking them for all the stuff they gave me! And they let me keep the clothes!"

Peter laughed at her plight. "You might be a celebrity of sorts now, Em. There's definitely some pictures or something up on the internet by now."

She opened her eyes even wider. "You're probably right. I'm so embarrassed!" She groaned burying her face in her hands.

Peter moved to stand next to her and nudged her shoulder. "I'm sure it's not as bad as you think it was."

Emmy lifted her head from her hands, and pouted at him. "I'm sure it's _worse_ than what I've imagined."

"You're so dramatic."

She just responded by playfully glaring at him.

They were interrupted by one of the employees calling out and telling them to make their way into the auditorium, and that it didn't matter where they sat, but it was first come-first serve. Lily appeared at Emmy's side in a flash, holding her hand and pulling her along. Before she could be separated from him, however, Emmy slipped her own hand into Peter's and tugged on him to follow. As they walked, he turned to look at his own group, worried they'd been left behind, but was relieved when he saw them immediately behind him. He was less relieved when Ned wiggled his eyebrows at him as he quirked his head at his interlocked hand.

Peter did note with some satisfaction—or, _a lot_ of satisfaction really—the scowl Flash was directing at him.

The free for all for the seats resulted in all the students being mixed up, and the teachers that chaperoned them lingering in the seats near the back. Peter ended up seated in between Emmy, Lily on her other side, and Cindy, with Ned and the rest of the decathlon members filed into the seats past Cindy. They chattered for a bit longer as everyone else got seated. Emmy was swinging her legs and excitedly talking to Cindy over Peter about a Korean drama they'd both just finished. Cindy was eventually distracted by Ned and Sally on her other side.

Peter looked at Emmy as Cindy turned away, and scrunched up his face, a habit he'd formed recently in response to her fangirling. Emmy stuck out her tongue at him and then poked his cheek, something she'd started doing in response to _his_ response. Before they could talk, some employees took the stage and signaled the start of their presentation. The lights went off in the auditorium since they were using the screens to show slides and videos.

The presentation wasn't really boring, but it was still done in the dark, on a Friday after a long school week and before a week-long break, so some people were zoning out. He noticed that Cindy was basically in a different world, looking like her eyes weren't even seeing the screen. Peter, himself, was starting to space out when he felt a weight on his shoulder.

Looking over, he saw that Emmy leaned her head on his shoulder, but her eyes were still open and she seemed like she was actually paying attention—unlike Lily on her other side who was sitting up straight, but with her eyes fully closed. He stiffened a little, and she moved her head to look at him questioningly. He knows that both of them were up late finishing a project the night before, talking to each other through FaceTime and going crazy making sure everything was perfect.

Peter shot her a small smile, then slouched into his seat so she could lean on him more comfortably.

* * *

When the presentation was finished, they were ushered back into the lobby. Lily and Cindy were drowsily clinging to each other and holding each other up, looking like they'd been friends for years and hadn't just exchanged Instagram usernames before they entered the room. Abe was speed-walking, trying to lose Flash, while MJ, Ned, and Sally were discussing one of the projects that was talked about during the presentation.

Emmy had an arm looped around one of Peter's, and they slowly walked towards the spot where their companions convened. The next part of the day was going to be a tour, and they were going to separate into smaller groups, going to different destinations at different times so rooms wouldn't be congested with a bunch of teens. It was again more of a free-for-all since the dividing up by schools wouldn't really work—Emmy's school only had 14 students there, while another school had a whopping 40 students. The teachers would just take roll at the end of the trip to make sure everyone was still there.

"Alright! I'll take you all over there!" The employee—Dominic, who was one of the people that actually supervised Peter in the lab, but was still in his mid-20s—motioned to the cluster that included Emmy, Lily, and the decathlon members that usually went around together, along with a few stragglers that were just standing around and, unfortunately, Flash. "I'm going to walk you around some of the floors of the building, show you some of the things we do here. Stay together! I do not want to hunt for a stray teen, okay?"

Affirmative murmurs made their way through the group and Dominic started walking them over to the elevator. When they were inside, no one really talked, still doused in that fatigue that hits after sitting in a dark room for so long. A few yawns escaped the students as the elevator journeyed up to whatever floor they were going to. MJ was using Ned as an armrest, and he didn't complain, probably because he was the one letting out the majority of the yawns.

As soon as the elevator came to a stop, Emmy tugged on Peter's arm and quickly left the elevator. He was a little puzzled at her haste, even more so when he saw the displeased expression on her face. "What's wrong, Em?"

"It smells like someone drowned in Axe in there," She whined. MJ and Cindy snickered at her distaste.

"I'm glad you said that." Dominic started, approaching them after he was sure everyone made it off the elevator. "I wasn't sure if I was actually smelling it, or if I was having flashbacks of my freshman dorm room."

Peter laughed. "No, that was very real." He turned a little to see Flash out of the side of his eye, seeing him turn a little red, but keeping very quiet.

"Never mind that. It's a life-lesson every dude eventually learns. Axe is not great," Dominic waved his hand, trying to move past the subject. "But let's get moving, shall we? A bunch of what I'm going to show you is on this floor, including part of what we use to power the building." He motioned for them all to follow him.

A lot of the tower had been remodeled to include more exhibits and commercial things ever since Tony relocated to the upstate facility, so aside from the labs where Peter and the scientists would test things, there was bunch of stuff showcasing their technologies—the safe ones and the ones that weren't classified, at least. They walked around for a little more than an hour, getting little speeches from Dominic about the things they saw, and about his job, and moving up to other floors a few times.

Ned was freaking out over everything that he saw, excitedly gushing to MJ, Lily, and Cindy. Peter couldn't help but think about how things have changed so quickly. Last year, pre-Homecoming—and even post-Homecoming—the only person he would have been able to hang out with on a trip like this was Ned. That same sentiment was pretty much true for him as well, Ned had really emerged as a social butterfly since all of the events of last year, but before that, they really only had each other. _Actually, that might not have ever been true_. He thought as he felt a hand grasp his, and pull him to the large window that showed the view of the city.

 _She's always been here too, we just never… tried, I guess._ Emmy smiled widely at him, and asked him to take a picture of her in front of the window—one that her mom would no doubt be the sole recipient of. _I'm glad that she's here now though._

The rest of the group had stopped to do the same thing, since they were apparently done with the tour, and were still taking pictures. Emmy made Peter stand in the spot she was in a few seconds ago so she could take a picture of him to send to May. He smiled as she continuously hit the button on her phone.

When she was done, she moved to stand next to him and look through the photos that she just took. She paused on one that was particularly good and looked up at him with a smile. "Oh, you look pretty in this one!"

Peter turned pink. She described a lot of people as pretty. Lily, May, her mom and sister, MJ and Cindy, the Korean boy band member she liked, but _not him_.

Not 'til now.

"Th-thanks." He said awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. She grinned at him, then looked back down at her phone as she sent the picture to May.

"Okay, all my children!" Dominic called out, getting a lot of questioning stares in return. "We're going to head down to one of the labs, and that is where we are going to eat lunch and finish out our day! Let's get going."

Peter lingered in the back, letting the rest of the group move forward since he was the furthest from the elevators anyway. He was still a little dazed from the compliment from Emmy, but that didn't last long before he felt an increasingly familiar hand holding his.

"Come on, Petey! Lily has a bunch of snacks, and I'm super hungry."

He laughed at the urgency in her voice. "Alright, I'm moving!"

* * *

"So I am going to let you guys eat in here, even though generally we're not supposed to encourage eating in the labs." "Just, please, pick up after yourselves."

"I know that y'all are here because you're in Physics, but my specialty is actually BioChem, so I'm going to show you some things in the Chem lab." Dominic flailed his arms around, indicating that the room they were in was probably a chem lab. "But right now for the physics-y engineering-y part, we can play with some legos while you eat.

"Is… is that all you could think of for Physics?" Peter questioned his co-worker.

"Shut up, Peter." Dominic glared at him. "You don't get to complain about my plans. We could just sit here and make paper planes for four hours if you want."

"Point taken."

"Good."

"After this, we're going to go ahead and start playing around with some of the chemistry equipment, but eat up first!"

Dominic left them to their own devices after dumping piles of legos on top of the lab stations. Their little group all positioned themselves around the station closest to the door, Peter in between Emmy and Abe, with Lily on Emmy's other side. They dragged around stools from other stations in the room, and even tried unsuccessfully to keep Flash away, though he managed to squeeze himself in.

Peter huffed a laugh when he saw how far from the ground Emmy's feet were hovering. She sent him a mock glare in return, and pulled the legos in front of her slightly out of his reach. "Hey! Don't laugh at me! Now I'm not going to share."

"Em," He paused, putting on a hurt expression for a split second, before easily reaching past her and snatching the set back. "You forget that I'm a _bit_ taller than you."

"Petey, so not nice!" She giggled, clearly not that bothered by the situation. "Now you have to build something amazing. Even better than whatever Lily is going to make, and she's a boss at making stuff."

"Yeah!" Lily called out, leaning over so she could stare Peter down.

Cindy burst out laughing. "Oh god, you sounded like the girls from Lilo & Stitch right now!"

Emmy lightly hit Lily's shoulder. "You were a Myrtle for a second there."

Peter laughed at their antics, but accepted their challenge. Their lunch was only about a half-hour long, but they spent a great deal of it in a building frenzy. Emmy built a ridiculously lopsided and pink tower that almost immediately toppled over. Peter ended up admitting defeat when he caught sight of Lily's elaborate creation, but only because he had to give a bunch of his own legos to Ned—and he was really hungry.

While everyone continued to build and eat, their conversations began to splinter off into smaller ones. It didn't escape anyone's attention, however, how Peter and Emmy slipped into their own world for the Nth time.

"I wish we could go home right away after this thing ends, it's such a hassle to have to go back to school first." Emmy muttered to Peter as they picked at the chips she placed on the table.

"I know," Peter sighed. "It's probably a liability thing, but it's still annoying to have to go back just to be able to go home."

"Do you have any idea what to watch today? I've hit a rut, I think I've binged too much and I don't know what to try anymore."

"We _have_ gone through a bunch of shows. I have no ideas either, but we can just figure it out later. You'll probably be completely swathed in a blanket anyway since it's supposed to get a little colder tonight."

"You know, I'm kind of glad Mr. Stark let me keep the clothes. The sweatshirt is really warm, and I am totally going to wear it every night."

"It is a very warm sweatshirt," Peter said, thinking of his own sweatshirt. "Why did you even try to return it?"

Emmy shrugged. "I dunno, just felt like I had to!"

"Em, if they weren't going to let you keep it, they probably would have told you a long time ago." They were speaking quietly, at a volume where the others could hear them if they tried, but would have to obviously strain to do so.

She frowned. "They just gave me so much, Petey. I… it's just a little hard to accept it all."

Peter considered her words before nodding. "I understand, it does feel strange to get all that stuff from them. But you know they'd never take it back, not when… _that_ was the reason they gave it in the first place."

"Mm, let's not mention that right now." She shifted a little uncomfortably. "It's still a little hard to think about."

"I kno—"

"Wow, Parker, I guess you are capable of talking to girls." Flash taunted. Sally actually groaned as the words left his mouth, completely over hearing his recycled insults.

"Wow, Flash, I guess you _aren't_ capable of leaving me alone," Peter said while focusing on the food in front of him, not sparing Flash a glance.

"Why do you keep bothering Peter over crap like this? Do you have a bunch of girls hanging over you or something? Because I haven't seen any evidence of that…" Emmy grumbled, annoyed by the ridiculous bullying.

"He doesn't, never has and never will." MJ declared matter-of-factly.

"You should get a hobby or something, honestly. I've seen you a total of two times, and all you've done both of those times is act like a total dick to Peter."

The other people in the room continued talking, not really paying attention to their situation, but the silence that fell over their particular station was tense. Flash didn't reply to Emmy's statement, but it was obvious that he wasn't enjoying the growing _lack_ of control that he had over his peers.

"Hey, all. We should get started on the chemistry stuff," Dominic said loudly from his spot across the room. "Partner up, two on each side of the tables!"

* * *

"Peter, you've already done this… you've done it _a lot_ , so you sit this out."

Everyone picked up a set of goggles and a lab coat, clamoring through the room to get partnered up and to the lab stations. Lily and Emmy were partnered up and giggling as they adjusted the goggles over their faces. Ned and MJ were sitting next to each other across from them, and Cindy and Sally were at the table directly behind them. Abe was at the same table as Cindy and Sally, looking visibly relieved even though his partner was someone who looked completely unfamiliar. _Ah, he's probably glad he avoided Flash._ Flash was on the other side of the room partnered with someone else that happened to be sitting a considerable distance from him. _The Axe strikes again!_

It probably wasn't the best experiment to have a bunch of high schoolers try out—definitely not the safest—but it was easy and it captured everyone's attention. They were all enjoying themselves using the chemicals to change the colors of the flames of the Bunsen burners. The room was filled with laughter and chatter as they tested all of the materials.

When Dominic was sure they weren't going to burn the place down, he plopped himself down on the stool next to Peter. "You and your girlfriend are pretty cute."

Peter glanced over at him. "We're not together, we're just friends."

"Really?" Dominic shrugged. "Could've fooled me. Well," He smiled sheepishly. " _Did_ fool me."

"You're pretty easy to fool though, Nick."

"How dare you!" He brought up a hand to his chest in mock offense, then settled back into a normal stance. "You're off next week, right? Not coming into the lab?"

"Yeah, all the high school interns get a break with the actual break."

"Cool, enjoy it." Dominic nodded at him, before his face shifted into a smirk. "When you get back, I'm making you do all the titrations."

"You _already_ made me do all the titrations." Peter deadpanned.

"You get to do more, then."

"It's like you're twelve." He laughed.

"You've probably figured by now that having a graduate degree doesn't make you suddenly mature." Dominic pointed out in a playfully serious tone. "It basically just turns you into a giant kid who happens to have a Ph.D and is an expert in some field."

"I guess…" Peter agreed, thinking about a bunch of the people he's met that do fit that description. He paused when someone popped into his head. "What about Dr. Cho though? She's mature."

"Dr. Cho is an exception. She is who we all aim to be, but will _never_ be."

Peter laughed at his supervisor, whose eyes were twinkling as he talked about his idol. "Alright, that's fair."

Dominic pushed himself onto his feet. "Okay, I'm going to make some rounds again, make sure this place doesn't go down in flames."

Peter boredly let his eyes wander the room. Everything was going fine, no one probably in the mood to burn down room in a tower owned by a snarky billionaire. They were also moving onto adding some chemicals into a flask, and using a magnetic stir bar to mix them and get it to change colors, so the fire hazard was decreasing.

Ned looked like he was having the time of his life, and was possibly a little _too_ excited because it sounded like MJ was trying to reign him in. Peter didn't even bother looking in Flash's direction because he could feel the glares that he'd been sending his way since the tour started, and had only increased in intensity since Emmy had defended him.

When Peter's gaze fell onto Emmy and Lily, he smiled softly at how much fun they seemed to be having. Ever since Emmy revealed how anxious she was about not only this field trip, but her future in general, he'd been worrying that she wouldn't be able to enjoy the day. _It looks like I didn't even have to worry so much._

He stared at her for a minute or so before she looked up and met his gaze. She waved at him with a dimpled-smile.

Peter flushed at getting caught, but waved back.

* * *

"I hope you all had some fun today! Before I let you loose, I sincerely hope this was of some help for all of you since you're getting closer and closer to graduating high school. You don't need to have everything figured out, but just see what you're interested in, or could be interested in," Dominic waved them off. "Now, go find your teachers!"

Emmy quickly circled her arms around his middle, embracing him for a few seconds before pulling away, though still standing close to him. "I'll see you later, Petey! I'll get the food today!"

"Alright, Em. I'll be a little bit later though."

"That's fine, I have to help my mom organize some stuff anyway when I get home."

"Are you sure you don't want me to get the food?"

"Yeah! You always get it. I should have a turn at some point."

"I honestly don't mind, it's not like I'm not already out when I get it."

"I guess…" She scrunched up her nose. "But I'm still getting it today!"

"Fine," Peter said, dragging out the word. "But I could stop by that bakery near the park and get some stuff still."

Emmy beamed. "Well, I wouldn't say no to that."

* * *

"They… don't even realize, do they?" Ned murmured, watching the interaction between his best friend and their childhood friend who'd managed to come back into their lives full force.

"No, I don't think they do…" Lily replied. The two in question were just so comfortable with each other, it was almost startling to see how easily they fit together. How their smiles upon seeing each other were almost instantaneous. How their hands were always hovering close by. "They'll figure it out though."

* * *

 **a/n:** parade by younha is what I listened to while writing this chapter.

Thank you for all the reviews, follows, and favorites! I hope to keep this a pretty light story to keep us all happy (: What I loved so much about Spider-Man: Homecoming is how well it portrayed high school and being a teenager, and my aim for this is to explore more of _that_. (And I am also glad that there are people enjoying the songs I'm including!)

More interacting, but in public this time. I didn't want to have the field trip be _that_ big a deal, more a vehicle to move forward rather than thrusting them into something more. Also, the best way to deal with your bullies (well, the ones that are just talk, like Flash) is to live your best life.

I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and let me know what you all think!


	9. becoming clearer today

보이지 않는 틈이 있어도  
서로를 향해 있는걸  
먼 길을 돌아 제자릴 찾은 걸까  
이제는 내게

we always felt so far apart,  
but it's becoming clearer today  
even the distance we couldn't explain  
has now become zero

-gfriend (여자친구)

* * *

 **Saturday**

"I can't believe we're officially on a school break and you're working on stuff for school!"

"I know, I know! I really just want to get ahead on it though," Peter groaned. "The assignments for Calculus usually pile up on me, this is my only chance to avoid that."

He spun around in his chair to look at Emmy, who was sprawled out on her back across his bed. Her fingers trailed across the scribbles that littered the supports of the top bunk. When she felt the weight of his stare, she rolled onto her side to face him.

She stuck her tongue out at Peter. "Such an overachiever!"

"Not even!"

"Mhmmmm." She drawled out teasingly. They both made faces at each other until Peter finally broke the chain and chuckled. Emmy smiled at him, before they returned to their original positions.

Half an hour passed by in a comfortable silence, the only sounds filling the room were of the occasional page flips and pen scratches, and Emmy periodically laughing at whatever she saw on her phone.

"Peter!" Peter glanced over his shoulder to see Emmy moving towards his closet, jumping up when he realized what she was looking at. "Is that yo—hey!"

"Nope, this should never see the light of day again!"

"Let me see it, c'mon!" He held the object of interest above his head, and tried to fight back a laugh as she unsuccessfully jumped to get it. "Petey!" Emmy stomped on the floor and pouted at him, moving so close to him that he couldn't ignore her and the pleading expression she was directing at him.

"Fine, here…" _It seriously only took three seconds of her pouting to get me to cave… You're getting weak, Parker!_

Emmy beamed at him, and quickly snatched the object out of his hands before he could change his mind. "Aww, this is so adorable honestly." Her grin widened as she moved back towards his bed to get a better look at it. "Where did you even get it?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." Peter muttered.

"Don't be like that Petey! It's part of your origin story!" Emmy laughed as she unfurled the object. "Spider-Man's shitty, but adorable homemade costume!"

"I don't even know why that one still exists. I was pretty sure they'd all been destroyed by now…" Peter sighed dejectedly, then murmured at a softer volume. "Unintentionally and intentionally."

Emmy laughed at his dramatics as she picked up the mask. "This is my favorite part."

"That's not surprising considering the rest of it is basically a poorly stitched together sweatsuit."

"Hey, 'ya better not talk smack about this costume like that!" She glared at him playfully. "I hear Spider-Man is quite strong!"

Peter snorted. "You're so lame."

"I am." Emmy flashed a peace sign with her free hand, and they both broke out in giggles. After a few seconds, she put the mask back down and looked at him like she was scheming something. "Hold on Peter, I'll be right back."

Before he could question her, she was climbing out the window onto the fire escape. He could hear her slide into her own room, but it was obvious that she knew exactly what she was looking for because she was back onto the fire escape in no time. As she moved to climb back into his room, he could see that she had one of those pastel instant cameras hanging around her neck.

Emmy smiles at him so widely that her upper gums were showing. "Can I try on your costume?"

"Why? And what's with the camera?"

"Because you love me! And I assume that having pictures of one of your costumes, in your room, on my phone wouldn't be smart." She stuck her tongue out at him.

"That's true… the part about the phone…"

"You don't love me?" Emmy gasped mockingly.

"Well…" Peter trailed off.

"Peter!"

"I'm just playing. Go ahead and try it, I guess."

Emmy squealed and scrambled towards the bed, throwing him the camera, which he caught with ease. She pulled back her hair and looked contemplatively at the outfit, trying to figure out how to tackle it. With a shrug, she just started to pull on the pants and top over her own leggings and long sleeve.

When she put on the mask and turned around, Peter couldn't hold back the snort that left him accompanied by laughter that he wasn't sure was going to end.

"What are you laughing at?" Her voice came out muffled through the fabric of the mask as she tried to adjust it so that the goggles were aligned with her eyes.

"Em, you look so tiny!" Peter choked out.

"Hey!" Emmy stomped one foot on the ground, but the sound was softened by the bottom of the pants which were pooled at her feet. From her posture, he could tell that she probably had her hands balled in fists as well, but they were completely covered by the sleeves of the sweater.

Peter smiled at her, before taking a photo. "You look so adorable. I'm sure this picture is going to end up looking like some kid dressed up as Spider-Man 1.0 on Halloween, throwing a tantrum."

"Hmph." She stepped to move towards him and almost tripped, getting caught on the pant-leg. He snickered at her predicament, but moved towards her instead.

"I wonder if people would have felt safe if they saw you as Spider-Man. I mean, you're like four-feet tall."

"Excuse me, Peter Benjamin Parker, I am _five feet_ and _one and a half_ inches tall, thank you very much!"

"One and a half inches tall, got it."

"Ugh, you suck."

"Mm, come again? Couldn't hear you from down there."

"Peter!" Emmy pulled the mask up to free her face, the goggles resting on the top of her head, so she could glare at him. It only made Peter laugh even harder. "Whatever." She pouted as Peter leaned over and rested an arm on her head.

"C'mon, let's take a picture where you don't look like an eight year old that got their candy taken away."

* * *

 **Sunday**

Peter was sitting on Emmy's bed, watching her dig through her drawers.

"So you're gone 'til Tuesday?"

"Mhmm," Emmy nodded. "My mom and sister are working the holiday, but they did get today and tomorrow off, so we're going to my sister's so we could spend at least _some_ time together."

"That's nice. You haven't seen them this whole semester, huh?"

"Yeah…" She sighed, though continued to pick out things and shove them into her backpack. "It kind of sucks because they don't even live that far. I mean, they live even closer than the Avengers facility! But that doesn't make it easier to align schedules and what not."

"I understand."

"Sorry if I'm being a downer, Petey." Emmy turned to face him, furrowing her eyebrows. He knew that it was just one of those complicated situations for her. _She's no doubt excited to see them, but it must be difficult knowing it's been so long and it's going to be over just like that._

"It's fine, Em. Don't even worry 'bout it."

She pouted before sitting next to him, placing her head on his shoulder. "What did I do without you?" Peter chuckled, then shifted his head to better face her, in the process, accidentally inhaling the scent of her hair. _She smells like vanilla…_

He found himself wanting to close his eyes and pull her in closer, but stopped before he could, stiffening as he realized how creepy it could seem.

Emmy pulled away from him, his sudden tensing not escaping her notice. She stared at him with a puzzled expression, until it looked like something dawned on her. "Peter, I never really asked you… Do I… Does it make you uncomfortable? The hugging and stuff?"

"N-no."

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I'm just, well, very affectionate I guess. I can sto—!"

"No!" Peter flushed at how passionately his response came out, and took in a deep breath to calm himself before continuing."No, that's not it at all. It's uh, just different y'know." _I don't exactly have much experience with people holding my hand and hugging me like this… whatever this is..._

"Are you sure?" She gave him a worried look, clearly troubled at the thought that she might have overstepped some boundaries.

"Y-yeah! I li— It's good." Peter smiled warmly at her, trying to ignore the blush that was still tingeing his ears and the back of his neck red. Feeling some sort of confidence run through him, he twisted his body to face her and opened his arms in invitation, to which she responded with a giggle and proceeded to wrap her arms around his middle. With her head tucked in under his chin, the vanilla scent hit him full force. _You're in deep, Peter._

* * *

 **Monday**

"What's got you smiling like that, kid?"

"Oh!" Peter startled at Rhodey's appearance, not realizing how close the man had gotten. He laughed a little sheepishly at getting caught off guard, but then passed his phone over to the man. "Just this video my friend sent me."

"Hmm?" Rhodey took hold of the phone and hit play, a small smile appearing on his face as the video progressed. The video showed Emmy with her niece, Mia, probably sitting on her lap, and Emmy getting her to talk—babble—about the small, temporary Hello Kitty tattoo on her hand. It ended with Mia putting her face super close to the camera to 'hug,' and say bye to Peter. "Actually, that really is cute."

"What's cute? Me?"

"No, Mr. _Stank._ " Rhodey deadpanned, then shoved the phone in Tony's face. "The video Peter's friend sent."

"That actually is painfully adorable." Tony said with a straight face, but both Rhodey and Peter could see the corners of his mouth twitching. "I'm surprised you're not actually with your little girlfriend right now, aren't the schools out on break?"

"Yeah, they are, but she's staying at her sister's for a bit. And she's not my girlfriend." The last sentence was murmured almost to himself.

"Okay, makes sense." Tony nodded, ignoring the words Peter muttered under his breath, while plopping himself down into the giant swivel chair. "But why are you _here?_ At the facility hours away from your home. Where we are doing literally nothing."

"I… uh… just…"

"You have no idea why you are here, do you?"

"Nope." _It probably wouldn't be a good idea to admit that I got restless and bored within one day of Emmy being gone for two days..._

Tony sighs. "Might as well have you do some training while you're here then."

"Awesome!"

"Never mind, I take it back. Go home."

"Mister Stark!" Peter whined.

"Fine," "Go find Dr. Cho, some of her team had some tech they made with you in mind. Let's see if it's actually worth something."

"If it's even remotely associated with Dr. Cho, it has to be amazing! Did you know that her…" Both Tony and Rhodey tuned out of his fanboying at that point, figuring that they just needed to let him run out of steam and that it would eventually end. After five minutes, they realized that wasn't the case.

"...When is your little girlfriend coming back? You're not going to be with us your whole break, are you?"

 **Tuesday**

Peter wasn't exactly sure what he was doing in the lobby of his building. _Is it a bit… clingy to be doing this?_

He spent the entirety of the night prior, after his patrol, trying to convince himself that he didn't feel anything more for Emmy than affection as a _friend._ Tony repeatedly calling her his girlfriend throughout the whole day yesterday sent his mind into overdrive. It was just confusing because it didn't seem anything like when he liked Liz, but he knew that he still felt it wasn't quite the same as his feelings towards anyone else. All he was sure of at that point was that he didn't like her _like that._ It was a hard sell, even to himself.

 _I don't like her like that, but why am I here, waiting for her to come home?_

He was sure that he was on the verge of a breakdown. His pacing was so intense that it could create a hole in the floor, and he was so close to ripping his hair out. _And the simultaneously best and worst part about it all is that as soon as I see her, I probably won't even care anymore._

"Hey Peter, what are you doing here? It's so early in the morning!" Emmy looked puzzledly at him, though still graced him with a smile.

"H-hey, Em! Uh. I was just getting home." Peter smiled crookedly back at her, shakily running a hand through his curls. _I mean, I'm just getting home after climbing out the fire escape and coming back in, but same deal, right?_

"At this time?" Emmy raised an eyebrow at him. "Was it _work_?"

"Y—yeah!" He squeaked. _Nice, Peter._

"Oh, cool." She still eyed him a little suspiciously, but let it slide, walking towards the mailboxes instead of grilling him

Peter calmed himself internally, trying to reign in his thoughts, then trailed behind her. "Where's your mom?"

Emmy hummed, focusing on getting the mail, before responding. "She just dropped me off, she's going to work now."

"Ah, makes sense. May just went to work too."

"Mm," Emmy flipped through the envelopes in her hand, looking at him when she peered through them all. "Have any plans today?"

"Not really."

"Want to watch some Unsolved? And probably take a nap?"

Peter grinned at her. "Sounds perfect."

She took a moment to shove the letters she was holding in her bag, then made her way to the stairs, looking wistfully at the forever-present 'Out of Order,' sign taped onto the elevator. "Gah, why does our building even have an elevator if it's never going to work?"

"Why don't you ask the landlord?"

Emmy grimaced at the thought. " _John?!_ No way, he's so creepy!"

"Then you're just going to have to deal with it." He shrugged.

"I have no energy left though." She whined, then looked at him with a pout. "You wanna carry me up, maybe?"

"Huh? You want me to?"

"Yeah." Peter wordlessly took hold of her bag, and then turned so that his back was facing her. As he started to bend his knees, Emmy cried out. "Oh my god, I was just kidding!"

"So you don't want me to?" He looked at her blankly over his shoulder.

"Won't it be too difficult?" She scrunched up her nose.

"Not at all," Peter grinned widely at her, then laughed as her face lit up at his words. He crouched down even lower so that she could easily climb on.

"Well, then yes, please."

Peter walked leisurely up the stairs, a true testament to the strength he possessed. He moved at a pace so slow and so steady, it was lulling her to sleep.

"Petey, maybe the nap has to come first." She mumbled against his hair.

He gave a short laugh. "That sounds good too."

* * *

 **Wednesday**

Peter had to physically will himself not to collapse from laughter at the sight in front of him.

Since May and Emmy's mom, Bell, were both working that morning and the following morning, the dinner was delegated to them. Sort of. Not really.

May had made sure just to order one of the pre-made, super American dinner sets from the grocery store, and asked them to go pick it up and heat it up the next day. Mostly because their cooking skills pretty much consisted solely of adding milk to cereal and putting leftovers in the microwave.

Emmy, however, still insisted on trying to bake a pie. She was decent at baking, and both of them were decent—more than decent, in Peter's case—at science, so she reasoned that they'd probably be able to handle measuring and mixing ingredients. Probably. Even though she'd never made a pie before.

This is what led them to the current situation, which was Emmy standing on one of the bottom shelves in the baking aisle, trying to reach the baking powder on the top shelf _and failing._ Her fingertips couldn't even graze the container.

Peter walked up right next to her and easily swiped the baking powder off of the shelf.

"Why didn't you just ask for help?"

"I could have done it myself!" Emmy huffed, stepping off the shelf and crossing her arms.

"I really don't think you could." Peter looked questioningly at her, not knowing if she was serious. _She was definitely nowhere near being able to reach it._

She stared back at him with an irritated expression, before she broke out in a laugh. "Yeah, no, it wasn't going to happen."

"This pie, however, is going to happen!"

"I'm sure we'll be able to make _something,"_ Peter jested. "Whether or not it will actually resemble a pie? Only time can tell."

"You're such a meanie sometimes." Emmy frowned with an exaggerated sniffle.

They walked to the registers at the front, holding baskets that contained all they were going to need for the following day. Peter could hear someone in the distance commenting about how adorable they were, but tried to block it out, especially since Emmy couldn't hear it. As they gathered all the items after paying, Peter insisted on carrying everything, even though it was a ridiculous amount of food.

"Are you sure you don't want me to help?" Emmy asked worriedly.

"This is nothing, I've got it." Peter assured her.

"If you say so…"

…

And it was absolutely true. They made it back to his apartment without her ever having to hold an ounce.

May was already home by the time they got there, and helped them put everything away. She even offered to help make the pie, and Peter furiously rejected her offer.

"Aunt May, you are really great at making some foods. Baking is not included in that."

May looked offended by his declaration, but didn't argue any further. "Fine sweetie, I'll be in my room if you need me." She pouted and walked backwards all the way to her room so he could see her pout.

"That was mean, Peter!" Emmy chided, but then she stared blankly at the wall with a contemplative look. "But I have tried her walnut date bread, so I can't completely disagree with your decision."

"I know what I'm doing."

She snorted at that. "We'll see if that's true with this pie."

* * *

 **Thursday**

"This is either going to be wonderful or a complete mess."

"Hey, you're the one that volunteered us for this."

"It didn't seem like it'd be such a big task! I mean, we don't even have turkey. Our meal is basically side dishes! And you should listen to me because that pie turned out _amazing._ "

"That's true…" Peter conceded. "But what is also true is that we have never done this…"

"We've got to start somewhere right?"

"Sure…" They both busied themselves unwrapping containers.

"Peter," Emmy started cautiously. "You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but have you and Tita May been celebrating holidays and stuff since Uncle Ben passed away?"

Peter was quiet for a long moment, somewhat unsure how to proceed. _It's not like we stopped celebrating, we still do things… It's just not the same? And sometimes it feels like we're just going through the motions even though I know Aunt May is trying her best._

"You don't have to answer! I'm sorry for bringing it—"

"No, it's okay, it's just a little complicated." Peter smiled reassuringly at her, but the worried expression didn't fade from her face. "We do, but some traditions are kind of getting lost? It hasn't actually been that long yet, but you know stuff like cooking a turkey or even something as ridiculous as him putting mistletoe everywhere so he'd _always_ catch May under one…" Peter trailed off, not really knowing what else to say.

"Are you okay with doing this? Ma and I haven't actually celebrated Thanksgiving in years, we don't have to do it if you're uncomfortable."

"I promise you, we're okay Em." Peter ruffled her hair, which would usually result in her sticking her tongue out or swatting him away in annoyance, but today just made her move in closer and wrap herself around him in a quick hug. As she pulled away, he asked. "How about you, how did you guys used to celebrate?"

"Nothing exciting really. When my sister was still living here, my mom would make a bunch of Filipino food. Lumpia, pancit, kaldereta… uh, what else? Oh! Filipino spaghetti. And then she'd also make this one dessert, sapin-sapin!" "But then my sister got married, and my mom started working even more. She's basically scheduled on holidays _all_ the time."

"I think I remember her spaghetti. Actually, I _definitely_ remember her spaghetti, I'm pretty sure I ate it for a week straight once."

"She used to make it a lot before because I told her you liked it!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, that was super long ago though. When we were like nine? Ten? Eleven? I don't remember."

"It's been a while, basically."

"Yes, basically."

"Did you do anything else?"

"Mm, no not really. Just used to watch the Macy's Parade on TV, and then start playing Christmas music. Christmas starts in September for Filipinos, y'know?"

"I actually do know that! Ned's mom spends a bunch of the fall trying to convince their family that it's not too early to put up their Christmas tree." "She loves Christmas so much, I think if it wasn't still reaching like ninety degrees in September, she'd start wearing her Christmas sweaters then."

"Aww, that's so sweet." Emmy cooed, probably imagining Ned's mom, who was even smaller than her, in oversized Christmas sweaters with puns on them.

Peter snickered at her reaction as they both turned to check on all the food that they placed in the oven and on the stove. They spent a good twenty minutes in a buzzing silence as the flitted around the kitchen until they were finally satisfied and sure that everything was set up correctly. "Hmm, y'know, we could watch the Parade today…"

"Oh! You wanna turn on the TV? We can do that!" Emmy clarified while setting the timer on her phone for the food.

"I was thinking we could swing there or something." Peter explained.

"Like go to the actual parade, it's kind of la— Oh, _god_ , you mean actually _swing_ don't you?" Emmy spluttered at the thought. "Petey, it's broad daylight right now, don't you think it'd be odd for Spider-Man to be swinging around the City for fun with someone clinging on to him."

"We won't get caught! Karen'll help." He chortled excitedly.

"Maybe next time Spider-Boy, when it's not freezing out, I'm not up for becoming a popsicle while swinging around freaking sky-scrapers."

"You're no fun," He pouted as she shot down his idea.

"I am plenty fun! Now, let's just turn it on here." They both sat down on Peter's couch—this time on the same couch and looked on as the parade went by on the TV.

Peter noticed that her face seemed a little wistful as she watched. "You look like you wish we'd gone out there."

"No, _you_ wish!" She countered. "I'm just kind of sad they don't have the Charlie Brown balloon anymore."

"It's not 1960 anymore, Em."

"Charlie Brown is _eternal_ , Pete!"

…

That night, Peter and Emmy were seated at the dining table in his apartment with May and Bell. They didn't start eating immediately after they got home, giving them time to shower and wash the hospital feel off of them so they could feel more relaxed as they ate. None of them were really dressed up, though they wore slightly nicer clothing than they'd wear on a regular day.

He was a tad bit nervous. While he'd known the Cruz family almost all of his life, he never had to sit with them in a setting quite as intimate as this. Especially in recent years—since Ben's passing—because he wasn't even really talking to Emmy then. And then there was the fact that Bell _knows_ he goes into her daughter's room alone. No matter how much she accepts that fact, and no matter how good-intentioned he is, it's still ridiculously awkward. _Please let me make it through this dinner unscathed._

"I'm so happy that you two are friends again," Bell commented, looking first at her daughter and then at Peter.

"Right? I was worried these last few years."

"It's certainly nicer when you two are talking."

"It felt like you'd grown up too soon," May sighed wistfully, gazing at Peter who knew she meant that for more than just that reason.

"I might prefer that you weren't alone together so often," Bell said a little pointedly, laughing as the two teens stiffened up. "But I'd prefer that over you acting like you didn't know each other."

May almost cackled as Peter and Emmy were both overcome with bright flushes. "You two are so adorable, I love you both so much!" She leaned over and pinched Peter's cheek.

"Mayyyyy!" Peter whined, turning an even brighter shade of red. _God this is_ _ **so**_ _embarrassing…_

But, perhaps, what was even more embarrassing was just how elated he was that Emmy was giggling at his predicament.

…

It said a lot that after being teased through an entire meal by their guardians, Peter and Emmy still gravitated towards each other so much that they stuck by each other the rest of the night.

May and Bell stayed seated at the table, waving their kids off and telling them that they'd take care of the cleanup since they did the preparation. May actually squealed for a nanosecond, fighting it back before anyone else but Peter could register it, when Emmy pulled Peter by the hand to the couch as the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special came on. Peter looked at May wearily, but was dragged away before he could see her response.

They actually were able to watch in relative peace, since May and Bell were talking in whispered tones—though Peter, before he tried to block it off, knew they were just talking about work and their own lives. He felt content since all the people around him were so relaxed. That changed about halfway through the special, as Emmy started to radiate a sort of restlessness.

As a commercial came on, Emmy turned to face him. "Petey…"

"Mm?"

"About… What my mom and May were mentioning…"

She definitely had his full attention with _that._ "Yeah?"

"I-I…" She looked at him fretfully, not really able to form the words, before she sighed. "Never mind, it's fine."

Peter gazed at her concernedly. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Emmy smiled at him weakly, then nudged him as the show came back on. "You gotta pay attention, Petey. Realize how glorious Charlie Brown is."

"More glorious than me?" Peter joked, hoping to cheer her up.

She tapped her index finger against her chin thoughtfully, then replied. "Most definitely." She said seriously, "Charlie Brown over Peter Parker any day and every day."

He looked at her playfully offended, before chuckling and pulling her over so her head was leaned against his shoulder. "Well, I say Emmy Cruz over Charlie Brown any day and every day."

Emmy shook with laughter against him. "Wait! Does that mean Emmy Cruz is more glorious than Peter Parker?"

"Maybe so."

* * *

 **Friday**

In what was a long overdue hangout, Ned and Peter spent Black Friday together, something that they'd been doing for years. At first, it was mostly because their guardians often had work that day following Thanksgiving and would drop off one of the boys at whichever house happened to have an adult in it. Eventually, at some point during middle school, they ended up partaking in the wholly American madness that was shopping on Black Friday.

It started with Peter seeing that a certain chemistry set was _half off_ during the sale. Then Ned discovered the deals that would be placed on LEGO sets at multiple stores.

"It's been forever since we've hung out dude, but for some reason, I'm not really mad about it." Ned shrugged as they walked down the street, heading to one of the few toy stores that was still open.

Peter glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "You know all of my secrets this time Ned, I'm not hiding anything anymore."

Ned chuckled and shot a smug grin at Peter. "I feel like I know more about you than yourself right now."

"What?"

"Nothing." He said in a sing-song tone, leaving Peter grumbling because he realized that Ned probably wouldn't explain. "I'm actually kind of surprised you're not with Emmy right now."

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Peter said in an exasperated voice.

"Dude."

"...dude?"

"You're hopeless."

"Thanks." He deadpanned.

"You're welcome." They both stared at each other blankly, before breaking out in giggles. Some people around them looked at them strangely, but since Ned's discovery of Peter's alter-ego, they'd been growing to be less and less affected by those kinds of judgements against them.

"Okay," Peter laughed. "Let's go get that LEGO set."

Peter felt overwhelmingly relieved because of how much he enjoyed himself.. It was a welcomed reprieve from the constant barrage of thoughts and complicated feelings he'd been drowning in recently. But it could only last for so long.

They were sitting at Delmar's, which had reopened since the alien tech incident, when he was suddenly hit by the strange anxiety that had been plaguing him. "Why… What makes you think I like Emmy?"

"Honestly, Peter. Let's look at this the other way. What makes you think you _don't_ like Emmy?"

Peter sighed, simultaneously confused and completely convinced that he _did not_ like Emmy. "This feels nothing like when I had a crush on Liz, or any of my other crushes."

"But do you _not_ like her?"

"..." Despite his strong conviction, the confused part of him was what took over in that instance and he found himself unable to answer.

"Peter, you're so dumb sometimes."

"Ned!" Peter whined.

"You two like each other as much as that I wanted that LEGO set. Which was a lot. Which is as much as I love Star Wars. Which is infinitely." Ned started almost jokingly, but continued in a softer tone. "I think you're both just not willing to come to terms with it yet."

"I'm not… I'm not sure."

"That's okay, Peter." He spoke with a certainty that only a best friend could have, like he _knew_ everything would work out one way or another. "We're sixteen, not _sixty_. You don't have to be sure. Just, uh, let it be? Also don't be too scared either. _Fortes fortuna adiuvat._ May the odds be ever in your favor."

"I'm pretty sure that's from the Hunger Games, and definitely not the Latin you just said." Peter laughed, feeling brightened by Ned's words. "Thanks, Ned."

"No problem, what are friends for?" Ned grinned with both rows of his teeth showing. He then shot him a thumbs up as his smile became more suggestive, with an eyebrow wriggling and everything. "But Peter, I _am_ just going to let you know, literally everyone else is one hundred percent sure you like her."

Peter groaned, but was in such a good mood that it came out with a snort and a chuckle. _He really couldn't keep the moment nice and sensitive._ "Dude, you were so close!"

"What?"

* * *

 **Saturday**

Something that even Peter and Emmy found to be odd was the fact May and Bell never really policed their hangouts. There were no enforced time limits or cries of "Keep the door open!" Even after Emmy fell asleep with her head on his shoulder and basically curled into his side, and May actually saw it, May had done nothing but take a photo. When May called Bell over to look at them, Bell actually ran over to her apartment to grab the nice camera she had and took _more_ photos.

Though unorthodox, when explained it made complete sense why they allowed it. Firstly, they knew their kids were ridiculously smart and aware of the consequences of doing anything… _untoward_. Secondly, they trusted their kids. Lastly, they weren't home a lot of the time anyway so it was pretty much pointless to try to enforce a curfew or an open door one day, and know that they could break that curfew or close the door literally every other day of the week.

That freedom is what led to their repeated, unintentional sleepovers, which kept happening mostly because Peter was always exhausted by the time they were meant to hang out. _Though I'm still absolutely sure they wouldn't exactly love that this, specifically, happens._

Like almost every other recent Saturday, Peter climbed into her room from the fire escape, freshly showered, holding food, and ready to collapse on a pile of blankets. Unlike the other recent Saturdays, they both weren't really in the mood to eat or watch anything, still in some form of food coma from the large dinner two days before, and it seemed Emmy realized that Peter was a great deal more tired than usual. So instead, they just laid down on the usual mountain of blankets and pillows on her floor.

Even though they practically fell asleep cuddled together on Thanksgiving, they still tried to keep some modicum of distance from each other—but Peter knew that in the two other times that this situation has occurred, they tend to shuffle closer in their sleep, and closer every time.

It was quiet for a long time that night, every inch of the room suddenly filled with silence. He could feel that she was thinking of something—had been thinking of something since Thursday—but he didn't want to push her into sharing.

"I'm glad we started talking again," She started, her eyes looking almost everywhere but him, even though they were positioned so close together.

"I'm glad too," He replied, not entirely certain where the conversation was going to head.

"You know," Emmy closed her eyes, unwilling to look at him as her voice started to waver. "I thought you hated me for a while. I kind of knew you didn't, but some part of me was so convinced."

"Hated you? How could I?" It hurt for him to think that she thought of him that way, but it hurt even more because he _knew_ that he gave her reason to feel that way.

"Well, I dunno. I guess it just felt like that… "

"I'm sorry, Em," He swallowed in a breath, not really sure how to continue.

She blinked her eyes open, her expression a little watery, a little unsure, a little hopeful. "No, it's okay. We're good now right? That's all that matters."

"Yeah, we're more than good." Peter let a soft smile take over his face as she beamed at him. Despite being so fatigued, Peter found himself unable to fall asleep, even as Emmy drifted off beside him. He wasn't sure how long he spent trying to avoid looking at her in that moment, so peaceful next to _him…_ When he finally let his fatigue take over, he didn't even have time to ponder over the weight of the last coherent thought he had before slipping into slumber. _We are more than good, Em. At least, I want us to be…_

* * *

 **a/n: '** hear the wind sing (바람의노래),' by gfriend (여자친구) is what I listened to while writing this chapter

Hello all! Thank you so so much for all the review, favorites, and follows. Thank you especially to _**Brenaners**_ for reviewing so faithfully. Also, _**SheepMeUp,**_ for the very thoughtful reviews. It's been very valuable, and I think are things I really will consider in the future with all my writing!

Sorry it took a bit longer than usual to get this chapter out. I hit a bit of writer's block with it in all honesty, along with the general busy-ness of life which is always insane, and had to write forward before I could really see what I needed from this one. It's not a heavy, it's mostly just to hammer in the confusion Peter is feeling, and how he's really starting to realize what he's _doing_. I do have an interlude of sorts to post, and that should be up pretty soon, so you won't need to wait as long for that!

Hope y'all enjoy all the fluff! Haha! Let me know what you think (:


	10. peter's interlude

Around a decade before Peter acquired any of his abilities, he met Emmeline Cruz when his parents dropped him off at his Uncle Ben's and Aunt May's place for the weekend. She wasn't so small then, not compared to him at least. She smiled nonstop, laughed just as much, and was always ready to drag him on all of her make-believe adventures. He didn't really mind hanging out with her because she always made sure to get enough money from her mom so that he could get a popsicle from the ice cream truck as well.

They never became best friends, just _okay_ friends. Before he officially moved in with Ben and May ( _Before his parents died)_ they only saw each other periodically. It was _fun_ , but it didn't happen often. When he did move in, they were both going to different schools. He went to the local elementary school, while she attended the one closer to her mom's job at the hospital and her dad's job at an engineering firm.

They would still say hi to each other, hang out when the opportunity arose, introduce their own best friends—his Ned, her Lily—and she was always sure to smile at him. And sure, there were moments. ( _The lopsided cookies they shared when she forced him to bake with her when he first moved in. The movie trips whenever the new Harry Potter films would come out. When she face planted while mimicking a figure skater. When_ _ **he**_ _face planted while trying to cheer her up during her parents' divorce._ ) But spending an hour or so together every few months was not enough to facilitate a _best_ friendship.

Middle school was even less conducive to any growth in their friendship. They were both busy with their own respective classes, school bands, and relationships. They would still talk every once in a while. They shared a laugh when they unintentionally got their first pairs of glasses during the same weekend. But Peter accepted the fact that those little moments were probably going to be the extent of their interactions. ( _He never told her about the bullying that filled his days. The insecurity when he realized he wasn't making any new friends. The pride whenever he did well in school._ ) They weren't going to be friends like _that_.

Immediately after Uncle Ben's death during his freshman year of high school, Emmy was there for them constantly. She let Aunt May embrace her through her sobs. She stayed and help put away all the cards and food that people were sending their way. She held his hand even though she knew he was going to yank it away. She was so _aware_ of him. She knew when he wanted to talk and when he _needed_ to talk. She knew when his temper was going to explode and when he was just going to cry. Looking back at that time, maybe if he'd paid attention a bit more he'd see that she would definitely be the person that could figure out his secret identity with no difficulty.

( _He found out sometime after he bled out on her bedroom floor that she deliberately put up the brightly coloured stickers on her window that he used as a marker for his own room in his earlier Spider-Man days because she was already suspicious then.)_

And _really_ looking back at that time? He can see that he refused to let anything happen. The friendship that was reignited and dialed up to the max by _The Incident_ very much could have been kickstarted back then. That, even though he convinced himself that them not talking anymore was just a natural drifting apart, it was something that he actually pushed for. He was the one that would pretend he didn't see her wave from down the hall. Who would redirect every conversation so it stayed impersonal. Who would make himself so busy that he couldn't say yes when she'd ask him to accompany her to the bakery. So she stopped trying.

( _But she never stopped smiling.)_

It's not that he didn't want to be friends with her. In middle school, he used to imagine what it would be like if she was there too. Would she have stood up for him? ( _Yes.)_ Would it have been less lonely? ( _Yes.)_ Would she have cheered him on? ( _Yes.)_ But with _Spider-Man_ and his abilities looming over his head, along with the possibility of gaining actual enemies that would look for the people he cared about, he wasn't going to try. Somewhere in his mind, subconsciously and consciously, he'd decided to push her away. To push them _all_ away.

( _Which he now realizes, while well-intentioned, was kind of dumb because it_ _ **didn't**_ _work, and all it did was lose them for months. Years in Emmy's case.)_

He doesn't totally regret it though. To some degree he _needed_ it. Just not for the altruistic reasons he'd thought.

No one really realizes how enhanced Peter's senses are. Sometimes even _he_ doesn't realize it, at least not since that period after his fight with Vulture when he'd really, painstakingly devoted himself to learning how to tune things out. He had a lot of recurring nightmares, but that particular one was the worst. The debris crashing down on him, the depleting oxygen, the absence of light—anyone would understand how terrible that situation could be. But adding in enhanced sensory abilities? How intensely he could _hear_ his own heartbeat? Smell the coppery tang of blood rushing out of his leg? Feel the sweat rapidly dampening his hair? How he was extremely certain that there would be no one that could help him because he could _hear_ that there was no one even close to the building he was trapped under?

It was a hell that he never wanted to experience again. Obviously, they were great abilities to have as someone that wanted to fight crime. They often gave him a leg up on his opponents, specifically the ones that were just involved in petty crimes. That fight with Vulture, however, showed him how having enhanced senses could very quickly be turned against him, and the training that followed to make sure that wouldn't happen was not easy at all. ( _To this day, he sometimes wishes that he just didn't have them anymore)._

Emmy is challenging his resolve though.

Generally, around school and his own home, he'd pretty much mastered 'turning off,' his senses. If he didn't, he'd probably go haywire in the boys' locker room.

But Emmy was a completely different story. It was truly an accident, the day it happened, too. He was just so off guard, and so relaxed, he didn't even realize it for a good minute that he had hyperfixed on the dilation of her pupils when she took off her glasses. And then, he found himself being attacked by it all every time he saw her. How he could count the amount of wrinkles as she scrunched her nose. How he'd register smell of the cherry flavored gummies she likes to eat following her around, or the tapping of her fingers against her leg when she's nervous.

( _Even more difficult, when he's not careful, he can hear her heart rate start to pick up as she nears him. Feel her pulse when they hold hands. He can see the depth of the smile lines etched into her face from across the room. Sometimes when he inhales he's sure he's going to drown in the vanilla scent that lingers in all the spaces she occupies.)_

Most of the time, he can easily block it out.

( _But he's finding it harder and harder to want to.)_

* * *

 **a/n:** surprise! A history and introspective of sorts. I had this finished already, so I decided to post it even though I just updated last night. Hope you enjoy! (:


	11. why we need to hold hands

그러니 우린 손을 잡아야 해  
바다에 빠지지 않도록  
끊임없이 눈을 맞춰야 해  
가끔은 너무 익숙해져 버린  
서로를 잃어버리지 않도록

that's why we need to hold hands  
so we don't drown into the ocean  
we need to continuously look for each other  
so that when we become too familiar  
we don't lose each other

-baek yerin (백예린)

* * *

 **First Period: Calculus**

"Hey Lily! How was your weekend?" Emmy greeted her best friend enthusiastically, her Monday-tiredness fading a bit at the sight of her.

"Morning Emmy!" Lily beamed. "It was great, I went to the birthday party of one of my cousin's and they let us take home all of the leftover cake. It was heaven, Em. Heaven!" She sighed dramatically, falling into her seat. "How was your weekend?"

Emmy smiled back at her. "That's awesome, dude. No one could ever forget your love for cake." She laughed as Lily held out a thumbs up towards her. "It was good, I mostly caught up on sleep, but I did get to go to the bookstore and get some new reads."

Lily gave her a sly look, dropping her voice to a stage whisper. "No Peter this weekend?"

She looked back at her questioningly. "Mm, no?" Emmy shrugged. "I saw him Friday night, but he was busy the rest of the weekend."

"You two would be cute together," said one of their class-and-band mates, Ryan, who was with them during that day at the boba shop. Along with William and Jemma, they all had a bunch of classes together and were in the band, and had known each other since middle school.

"Aren't they already together?" Jemma said, as she lifted her head from her desk.

"No, we're not." Emmy frowned. "I don't even like him like that."

"Who? Peter?" William asked, as he walked in the room. "Of course you do."

"I don't," She insisted. "Why do you guys even think that? It's not like I treat him any differently than any of you."

William nodded slowly. "I'll give you that, even though you hugging him was one of the highlights of this semester, you are very PDA friendly with everyone." He smirked teasingly. "But you definitely do like him."

Emmy pouted. "I don't!"

"Your smile whenever you get a text from him says otherwise," Jemma taunted.

"Em, it's totally fine to like him, you know?" Lily leaned over and patted Emmy's hand comfortingly, knowing how much the subject was bothering her.

Before they could discuss the situation even further, the final bell rang and the teacher signaled the start of class. Emmy frowned at her friends again, then tried to focus on the lecture even though her mind was racing.

* * *

 **Second Period: Gym**

"I can't believe they're making us run the mile _today."_ William complained while trying to shrink further into the layers of clothes he had on over his gym uniform. "It's been sunny and clear for weeks, but they decide today is the day. When it's not only cold, but it's actually cold _and_ misty!"

Emmy nodded fervently, mimicking William's actions and sinking into her hoodie like a turtle. "They live to torture us. I can already feel my nose running!"

"Hopefully Coach Smith is watching us today instead of Coach Miranda."

"Oh, I know. He always just disappears during run days and lets us time ourselves." Emmy laughed. "But with our luck, it's probably Miranda, we wouldn't even be outside if it was Smith."

"Ugh, I hate that you're probably right." He groaned.

Emmy made a fake crying face. "I hate that I'm probably right too."

Along with the rest of the class, they both sluggishly trudged their way out to the track, only to immediately be forced to start running. There was a collective groan as the class dragged themselves into a jog.

Both of them weren't exactly the most athletically inclined, but they kept a decent pace and stuck around the middle of the pack. It wasn't quite cold enough for them to see the puffs of their breathing, though it was probably on the brink of it so the movement was actually helping them to keep a bit warmer.

"You got any plans for the holidays?" William huffed out, the words shaking slightly with each step as he slowed, his feet hitting the ground a bit harsher.

Emmy loosened the strings of her hood, which she'd tightened around her face, so she could reply. They were sneaking in a walk while the coach was turned around. "Ah, not really. I mean, I guess my sister and her family are _actually_ gonna come visit us this year, but that's really it."

"Hey! That's still something!" He grinned widely at her. "You barely see them, Em."

She smiled wryly at him, but grumbled out her next words. "Well, that's not exactly my fault."

William looked at her sympathetically. "It isn't, but you know they're trying."

She sighed. "Yeah, I do know."

They both quieted as they finished up the rest of the run, the cold becoming unbearably harsh against their faces. They didn't even bother to listen to their time and ran straight into the gym, where some of their faster classmates were already lying down on the ground trying to absorb the heat of the room. Emmy followed their examples and plopped down on her butt a good distance from the others, William immediately lying down on his front next to her. "No plans with the infamous Peter Parker?" He didn't even bother lifting up his head as he talked, the words muffling against the ground.

Emmy flopped onto her back and murmured. "Infamous?"

William hummed. "You've been talking about him since we were twelve, but I just met him this year. So yes, kind of infamous."

"You make it sound like I'm obsessed with him!"

"If the shoe fits…"

"Hey!" She rolled closer to him and swatted his shoulder.

"I'm just messing with you," William laughed, but shifted into a fonder tone as he continued. "But you definitely see him differently."

"No, he's just my friend, like all of you."

"That's really not true Emmeline, you talk about him like he's your hero, sometimes like he's your _world_ , and this was even before you like-liked him."

"That-that's…"

"Emmy, you've always loved Peter." He turned to look at her and saw the refusal on the tip of her tongue, along with a lot of uncertainty that she probably didn't realize she was projecting. He cut her off before she could even retort. "Just 'love,' not 'in love.' You were devastated when you stopped talking, and we all knew it even though we didn't know _him_."

"I…"

"It's okay to like him, you know that?" William said assuredly. "You'll be fine, Em."

* * *

 **Third Period: Physics**

"How in the world did you pull off that grade on that exam Emmy?"

"What do you mean by that?!"

"Shit, that didn't come out right." Ryan said hurriedly, panicking at the glare she was directing at him, flailing his arms to emphasize that he was not hostile and not ready to be on the receiving end of her wrath. "I didn't mean that to shit on you, I _know_ you're smart dude. But you'd been struggling just as much as me with that last unit!"

Emmy kept her eyes narrowed at him, but nodded her head slowly. "Ah, I guess that's true."

He laughed nervously. "So, what'd you do since we last studied together on Wednesday?"

Emmy pondered his question for a second before realizing where their paths had split. "Oh, well, Peter helped me on Thursday."

"...Peter helped you. Of course he did." Ryan started to smirk until he saw the glare starting to reappear on her face.

Emmy hummed, trying to move past his smug tone. "If you want, I could lend you the notes I took? I've redone them since Peter explained it to me."

"You're a lifesaver, Emmy. Our quiz this week still has this crap, so I definitely need any help I can get." Seeing that the teacher was about to start their lecture, a surge of bravery hit him because she wouldn't be able to do anything once they were taking notes. "And this is the closest I can get to having a Peter."

But he clearly underestimated her reaction time because she still managed to smack his arm before they dove into the lesson. "You all aren't going to give this up, huh?"

* * *

 **Fourth Period: English**

Even though her teacher for AP Literature has made a big deal during the first week of classes about taking their phones away if they ever caught a glimpse of it, Emmy quickly realized that the bravado was really just bravado when she accidentally left her phone on her desk not even a month into the semester and they just looked at it and walked away. Eventually, the whole class had taken to leaving their phones out and even brazenly using it in the middle of lectures.

They were currently reading Wuthering Heights, and Emmy absolutely hated it with a passion. Sure it was a great piece of gothic literature, but everyone was so terrible and incredibly infuriating. And as much as she loved the teacher and reading, spending half an hour analyzing every page was draining her soul straight from her body.

It seemed almost sent from the heavens when her first phone lit up with a small preview of a picture that was sent to her. Emmy pulled her phone a bit closer and realized that it was—of _course—_ Peter that had messaged her, and it was just the Surprised Patrick meme from SpongeBob with no other context. Smiling to herself, she immediately typed out a reply.

 **Emmy Cruz (10:09AM):** Why did you send me that?

Though her text was also accompanied by a cache of SpongeBob memes that she'd stored—and organized, thank you very much—on her phone.

 **Peter Parker (10:10AM):** Why did YOU send me those? How did u even get them so fast lol

 **Peter Parker (10:11AM):** btw Ned gave me some Filipino desserts from his mom to give to you

 **Peter Parker (10:11AM):** u have band rehearsal today?

 **Emmy Cruz (10:12AM):** aww tell him thanks!

 **Emmy Cruz (10:12AM):** WAIT lol I can just text him thks

 **Peter Parker (10:12AM):** lol dork

 **Emmy Cruz (10:13AM):** n ya, I do! I gotta train home today tho :p

 **Emmy Cruz (10:13AM):** so cold! TT

 **Peter Parker (10:15AM):** aw poor eternally cold em

 **Peter Parker (10:15AM):** the bane of ur existence lol

 **Peter Parker (10:15AM):** seriously, stay safe tho em

"Dude, if you smile any longer, your face is going to get stuck like that." Jemma chuckled, now sitting across from her, their desks pushed together so that they were facing each other. Emmy flushed, realizing that the entire class had started to rearrange themselves into their reading groups without her noticing. "Your dear, Peter?"

Emmy stuck her tongue out, not gracing her with an answer, but her grin stayed present as she replied to his message.

 **Emmy Cruz (10:17AM):** will do (:

* * *

 **Fifth Period: Lunch**

"We're going to need to create a mission." William declared as they all sat down at their lunch table.

"For what?" Jemma raised an eyebrow at him.

"Operation: Get Emmeline to admit she likes Peter Parker."

Emmy groaned, tired of their determination to stay on that topic. They'd teased her before, teased each other before, about crushes and possible crushes, but they were going in hard on this. "Dear lord, y'all are nothing if not fucking persistent."

"It's just the truth, darling." Ryan said exaggeratedly.

" _It's not._ "

"It ab-sah-fuckin-lutely is."

"Mooooooving on!" Emmy yelled, which only resulted in the rest of her friends giggling. She didn't know whether she should laugh along with them and the ridiculousness they were exuding that day or glare at them.

"Okay, okay." Lily chuckled at the situation going on at their table, but sensed that Emmy was about to explode—or at least throw her pudding at everyone—and intervened. She actually thought about continuing the conversation in a more Emmy-friendly fashion, but a cold gust of wind suddenly had all of them shivering and huddling closer together. "You know, this school seriously should have built a bigger cafeteria."

Jemma nodded, trying to absorb warmth from her mashed potatoes by hovering her face right above them. "Definitely! It only fits like three people and the rest of us have to deal with the insane New York weather."

Ryan snorted as he remembered some of the crazy things they've had to deal with since they claimed one of the tables, which happened to be located outdoors, as theirs. "Oh my god! Do you remember when Lily got a fucking monsoon dumped on her just walking across the plaza? That was hilarious."

They all burst out into laughter so loud that the other people in the plaza looked at them for a second, but Lily looked pained as she recalled how drenched she was that day. "I, in particular, did not find that hilarious at all." They all laughed even harder after hearing her response, though it quickly died down as they saw some other people running to the other end of the plaza. From the shouts that they could decipher, it was obvious that a fight was about to happen. "But, you know, if we all could fit in the cafeteria, we probably wouldn't get all the free entertainment that we do."

They contemplated getting up to watch, but the fight was broken up before it could even happen by the teacher from the room the prospective fighters were standing in front of. Everyone felt a little disappointed.

When it became clear that the fight wasn't going to happen, Emmy pouted. "True. I wonder what it is about this area that draws in all the fights, but I'm not gonna lie, my week isn't complete without them."

William stared at her intently before putting on a smug expression. "Hmm, I wonder, are there fights at Midtown?" Emmy groaned as it seemed the conversation was going to cycle back to Peter.

"Those nerds? No _way_." Ryan scoffed, not quite grasping where William was the was trying to steer their talk.

Lily looked at him seriously. "Dude, you're a nerd."

Ryan looked affronted by her words and ready to argue, but saw that they were all looking at him the same way. "...yeah." He sighed. "Still, I doubt Midtown is as angry as all the public schools."

"What does it look like there?" Jemma wondered, directing her question towards Emmy. None of them had actually ever seen the campus of the school, though they knew that it required testing for admission and had some serious funding—along with some seriously funded kids attending.

"I… don't know? I've never been there." Emmy shrugged. She was as clueless as them in that department.

"Really?!" Ryan cried out.

"You didn't go to their Homecoming with Peter?" William asked her, tilting his head.

"Uh, _no?_ "

"Why not?"

"Because our Homecoming was the same weekend?" She looked straight at him, trying to will him to understand and _stop_ talking about Peter with her eyes.

"No, what?" Ryan yelled. "I can't believe you didn't go with him, you should have went to theirs instead! You were supposed to do reconnaissance there."

"He didn't ask me," Emmy said, annoyed with their non-stop obsession with her relationship with Peter. She was about to go on a rant about _why_ he wouldn't ask her, and how she didn't like him, until she remembered the second part of what he'd said. "Reconnaissance for what exactly?"

"Okay, but you would have went with him if he did ask you, got it." Ryan looked triumphant at the answer she'd given, like it answered every question in the world. "And you know… just… in case."

She scrunched her nose, still not able to think of any reason for his proposed spy-work. "In _what_ case?"

He muttered under his breath before he exclaimed, "So we can beat their band?"

"We're not even in the same division as them?"

"Okay, fine. There's someone really cute in their Decathlon team, I think they're a senior?" Emmy aww'd and looked like she was about to squeal, but Ryan suddenly gave her a sly look. "Maybe we can go on a double date with you and Peter…"

He cackled at how defeated her expression was before she buried her face in her hands and murmured. "I'm just not even going to try anymore."

* * *

 **Sixth Period: Photography**

"I am never going to be good at Italian," Emmy cried out dramatically. "My pronunciation is freaking trash."

"You sound fine."

"I sound really Filipino!"

Jemma gave her a blank stare. "...you _are_ really Filipino though."

Emmy stared back, then giggled lightly. "That's true."

They both smiled at the pre-presentation jitters coursing through her. "At least it's smooth sailing for you once you say the title of your piece," Jemma said while taking another look at her photos. "Your project is so gorgeous."

She blushed and smiled at her. "Thank you, Jem!"

Jemma flipped through the pictures. "That's… Peter's aunt, isn't it?"

"Yeah, Tita May," Emmy nodded and grinned at the particular picture Jemma was observing. "I think she's known me, uh…" She paused, her eyes widening as she realized exactly how long she's known May. "Oh, since I was born! Holy. Didn't even think about that, but our families have always lived in our apartments."

"That's crazy, wow!" Jemma exclaimed. "It's cool that she posed for it though."

"I know!" Emmy agreed. "She was really down to dress up though, the clothes are actually her mom's." They both went through more of the pictures, Emmy telling her more of the details behind some of them.

Jemma groaned. "No contest, Emmy, you have the best project in the class. I'm just glad I presented yesterday already."

"Yours was great too, what are you talking about?"

"But yours is giving me the feels, ugh." Jemma swatted at her shoulder, then sank into her seat, acting like she was swooning. "It's just _so_ sweet, the story and everything!"

"Oh, thank you…" Emmy flushed at the praise and smiled softly. "I'm really quite grateful to her, it was nice to sit down and hear about her life."

"Keep it up, girl, and she's gonna be your in-law." Jemma said teasingly.

Emmy shrugged. "Mm, I don't think it would change anything, she's already my Tita anyway." Jemma didn't say anything, but noted curiously that Emmy didn't deny the possibility of getting together with Peter this time.

* * *

 **Seventh Period: History**

History was the only class that Emmy didn't share with one of her close friends. While there were people in the class that she talked to and considered to be friends, none of them really concerned themselves with each other's lives. Mostly, they interacted during classes when they had group work or bits of free time.

This lecture, however, was just a film. A long, boring film. Their teacher even apologized before she started it because she had to leave them in the middle for a meeting, and the film was going to take the entire period.

A great deal of the class wasn't even paying attention, and most of them were even sleeping. The row in the back, where Emmy sat, was cloaked in the cyan blue glows of their phones and their laptops since the student TA was the only "authority," left to monitor them.

It was like the universe was willing her to delve into thinking. And those thoughts happened to be about Peter Benjamin Parker. She groaned internally as her mind drifted into the realm of exactly what she'd been trying to avoid the whole day.

Not that she wasn't thinking about him the whole day anyway.

She couldn't _stop_ thinking about Peter.

She definitely didn't have a crush on him when they initially reconnected—she had it pretty bad at that point for someone in Physics.

But now?

That boy in Physics didn't even register, not even when he smiled at her.

Emmy found it extremely embarrassing, which is _why_ she didn't want to talk about it, but Peter'd been on her mind a lot since he fell asleep in her room.

Sometimes, she found herself imagining what it would be like if he liked her. Would they get together? Could she cuddle with him?

She'd heard him talk about how he's considered a loser, and somewhat of a loner—aside from Ned, and recently, a bunch of AcaDec—but she's honestly so sure that he's probably not looking closely enough. Really, there had to be a ton of people that had crushes on him. He's sweet. He's smart. Sure, he's a little awkward, but he always means the best. She knew they'd all combust if they found out on _top_ of all that, he was fucking _Spider-Man_ and protecting Queens.

And Emmy would be lying if she said that she didn't stare at him. _A lot._ He was just _so_ beautiful. Maybe a superhero wouldn't really want that to be their descriptor, though all Emmy would say to that is ha! No one can control her mind, least of all Peter. She would believe that he was soft and beautiful until the end of time, and truly, anyone who was lucky enough to see him waking up in the morning would feel the same—and she would also be lying if she said she'd _want_ anyone else to have that chance.

She wanted to run her hands through his hair, wanted to cling onto him and not let go. Emmy wanted to dislike him for turning her into a giant cheeseball, filled with all these feelings, but she _liked_ him too much to even consider that.

As much as she wanted to deny it, he was her best friend but… she wanted him to be more.

* * *

 **Eighth Period/After School: Band**

Their shared band class was the last 'class,' of the day. It was actually an optional period, mostly utilized by students with electives. Band fully took advantage of the eighth period, and people that had it often described their day in band as eternal because it ran directly into practice after school, which sometimes lasted until well into the evening.

Luckily their practice ended before 6PM, so most of the students practically flew out of the school and started making their way home. Lily, however, tended to get picked up by her mother, and this day was no different. Emmy waited with her by the school's parking lot, both of them sitting on the low wall with their school's name carved into it. Usually they'd be talking at a mile a minute, but, today, Lily couldn't get Emmy's attention at all.

"Em."

"..."

"Emmy."

"..."

"Lina."

"..."

"Emmeline!"

Emmy startled, wobbling a bit on the wall while looking at her wide-eyed. "I… I like Peter?"

"Mm." Lily continued cautiously, seeing the panic start to spread across Emmy's face. "Well… yeah, you do. I'm pretty sure."

"I…" Emmy trailed off.

"What's wrong?"

She paused for a long moment, before speaking in a soft voice. "I don't want to like him."

"Why not? What's wrong with liking him?" Lily stared at her incredulously, because this was the girl that had always been a little in love with Peter Parker. Not in the romantic sense—not until recently at least—but it was always clear that she adored him.

"We _just_ started talking to each other again, Lils. Our friendship was almost non-existent for like two years. I-I can't…"

Realization dawned on Lily. "You don't want to lose it again." She patted her friend's hand comfortingly. I understand, Lina."

Emmy let out a defeated laugh. "I must sound so dumb, freaking out over something like this. I sound like a sixteen year old."

"You are a sixteen year old you fucking loser." Lily chuckled, smiling at her best friend fondly. "Dude, it's totally a valid worry. Just don't dwell on it too much, I'm sure it'll work out anyway. And honestly, you're so into him, you're not just a fucking loser when you're with him, you're a fucking _lovesick_ loser that forgets about everything else in the world."

"That is not true!" Emmy huffed.

"It so is!" Lily cackled. "Fucking lovesick loser."

"Ana!"

"Lina!"

"You're so annoying."

"No, I'm just right." Lily winked at her before sighing. "I guess we're not going to have to go through with Operation: GETASLPP, aka Operation: Get Slapped, after all."

Emmy's mouth opened and closed like a fish before she squeaked in disbelief. "Di-did you guys actually come up with a plan?"

"Mm, kind of? It mostly just involved locking you in a closet with Peter." Lily shrugged nonchalantly.

Emmy stared at her best friend in disbelief. "How… how were you even going to achieve that? When were you going to conveniently have both of us near a closet?"

"Sorry, your clearance level isn't quite high enough to hear the details of this plan. You're welcome to try again once you've advanced through the ranks a bit further." Lily said with a stern face that she managed to maintain through the whole spiel.

"You are insufferable." Emmy pouted.

"So are you lover-girl." Lily grinned widely at her, then, almost impossibly, her grin grew even wider as Emmy took a look at her phone. "Oh, speaking of, that's some shade of red you've taken on. That Peter?"

"Y-yes."

"You're going to be fine, Em. You don't have to tell him now. Just feel it out." Lily scooter closer to her best friend, pulling her into a side hug.

"I…"

"Dude, as soon as you see him, your anxiety about this is gonna fly away. It's going to take a vacation. I swear, just hold his hand, because you know you're going to _anyway_ and focus on that." She shook her head, thinking about how ridiculously sweet the two were. "Just take the weekend to let it soak in, and you don't have to do anything other than that, I promise."

Like any other female on the planet, they were very attuned to sounds of footsteps and other indicators of people approaching them. They both turned cautiously as a figure made its way down the sidewalk, closer and closer to their location. Lily was ready to toss her metal water bottle, until they realized it was only the man of the hour.

"Peter!" Lily grinned, almost resembling a shark as she settled her gaze onto him. He looked alarmed at the excitement on her face. "Are you here to accompany my precious best friend home?"

"Uh, hi Lily," Peter started, still on guard. "Y-yeah, I am."

"Good." Lily nodded and gave him a smug look. "What a gentleman."

"Thanks?"

She looked at him seriously. "Yes."

"O-Okay?" He said nervously, feeling a little antsy about the way Lily was acting.

Emmy jumped down from the sign and walked towards Peter. "Just let it slide Peter, she's been weird the whole day."

"I have been weird my whole _life."_ Lily said, acting like she was affronted.

Emmy smiled at her. "I won't deny that."

"Hey!" She replied loudly, but the grin on her face signaled that she wasn't really offended.

"You said it!" Emmy laughed and moved to hug her friend as she hopped off the sign. "Text me when your mom gets here!"

"No need to, she's pulling up right now!" Lily pointed to her mom's car entering the parking lot from across the lot. She made a shooing motion and physically pushed Peter to make them leave. "You, however, need to text me when you get home!" She yelled as they walked away, giggling when she got a peace sign thrown up in response. Lily watched as Peter grabbed Emmy's instrument case and held it in the hand not in between them. She wanted to simultaneously squeal and vomit as their hands naturally gravitated towards each other, but settled on snickering and shaking her head. "Fucking lovesick loser."

* * *

 **a/n:** maybe it's not our fault (그건 아마 우리의 잘못은 아닐 거야) by baek yerin (백예린) is what I listened to while writing this chapter, and the next

I hope you all enjoyed this, even though it was heavily Emmy & OC focused this time. I'm going to upload the next chapter concurrently! Please let me know what you thought!


	12. when we become too familiar

그러니 우린 손을 잡아야 해  
바다에 빠지지 않도록  
끊임없이 눈을 맞춰야 해  
가끔은 너무 익숙해져 버린  
서로를 잃어버리지 않도록

that's why we need to hold hands  
so we don't drown into the ocean  
we need to continuously look for each other  
so that when we become too familiar  
we don't lose each other

-baek yerin (백예린)

* * *

Surprisingly, realizing that he liked Emmy wasn't really a dramatic affair.

It was random, a chance placement of a reflective surface near the exact spot they happened to be walking by that showed him the ridiculously lovestruck smile prominently displayed on his face as Emmy ranted about how dumb the book she was reading for English was, and how it was absolutely criminal to be forced to read it during the break. It was almost cartoonish, too big for his face, and his eyes seemed so… _tender_. _Oh my god, I look so dopey._ _Have I always looked like this around her?_

They were walking towards their apartment building from the subway, the sun already far out of sight even though it was barely six in the afternoon as it tends to be in the later months of the year.

He'd taken to waiting for her outside of her school on the days that she had band practice. Peter knew that she'd be able to make it home fine without him, that she'd been going home alone for years, but he just felt more at ease knowing she had company walking through the night. There was a restlessness in the city that he could feel was growing as the holidays and school breaks were nearing, not only in the excitement as more decorations went up, but his patrols were proving to be more and more eventful as crime seemed to increase as well.

Peter just wanted to make sure she was safe. _And probably spend more time with her._

Emmy smiled at him quizzically, tilting her head like a puppy. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Wh-what?" Peter stuttered, caught off guard. _How long exactly was I staring at her._ "Like what?"

"I dunno, just… like… you look like you just thought about your squished Delmar's sandwich! You always look so happy when you get one."

"O-oh! That," He squeaked, completely unsure about how to proceed, "that's because I was!"

"Thinking about your sandwich?" She raised her eyebrow at him.

He nodded confidently. "Yes, definitely."

"Okay." She replied, accepting his answer, but with a smile that, if he _strained_ his mind, looked strained to him. _Was that disappointment? Did I want it to be?_

"Hey, do you want to stop somewhere and get something to eat before we go home?"

Emmy grinned at him and he wanted to _die_ because his heart should not be skipping like that all because he caught sight of her dimples. She threaded their fingers together, and shifted closer to him as a slight chill passed by.

She chattered somewhat nervously the whole time that they walked towards a small burger place in their neighborhood—not the most aesthetically pleasing, but the most reliable. He thought that he might be reading too much into her ramblings, even though the unusual stammering and somewhat higher pitch she'd taken on registered with him instantly. The quickened pulse and the red tingeing her cheeks, however seemed to be an even bigger sign—he wasn't any better off, he was sure that he was pretty much squeaking out answers the entire time, and his ears were probably as red as his suit.

Emmy let go of his hand as she moved to sit, and Peter's hand immediately ached to take it back into his grasp. Even under the grossly fluorescent glow of the lights in the restaurant, sappy thoughts about how pretty she looked flittered through his mind and he knew. _I like her._

* * *

Peter Parker was an idiot. To his credit, he was never the one that claimed he was a genius or even had an ounce of intelligence.

She warned him against doing it, multiple times, repeatedly trying to get it through to him that it probably wouldn't be safe. That someone would see.

But _he_ was still the one that insisted that he wanted to swing somewhere in the city, that he _had_ to bring her along with him that way. It was an impulsive decision really, he'd finally admitted to himself that he liked her and it was New Year's Eve and her mom and May were both working through the night, so why not bring her to see the ball drop from the best possible view?

And honestly? He would never take back experiencing it. His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest the whole fucking time, and she was clutching onto him so tightly he could feel the crescents of her nails imprinting themselves on him through his suit. And then she _smiled_ at him with the backdrop behind her being the lights of the freaking city and— _and_ she kissed him on the cheek as the ball dropped.

All of it, just all of it.

He probably should have had enough sense to realize that it could invite a bunch of trouble, but the giddiness coursing through his veins was severely clouding his judgement. That simultaneous anxiety and excitement that manifests when you realize you have a crush on someone was overwhelming and sweet and it was just so light.

Spider-Man was something that he would never even consider giving up, but he craved the weightlessness and the good that Emmy made him feel. The stresses he carried with him just seemed to disappear when she was there.

* * *

It went down and was tied up so quickly that no one even had time to be suspicious that anything was actually happening.

The picture that they'd sent honestly didn't really show much of anything. It was obvious that someone was clinging onto him as he swung through the city, but Emmy was wearing a—thankfully, nondescript—fleece hoodie with the strings of the hood pulled tight to protect from the cold air. She even had gloves on, it didn't even show her _hands_. That's how much nothing it showed.

But the message that was accompanying the picture taped onto the railing where he was regularly spotted as Spider-Man, the " _We've got the girl, come to the warehouse by the bridge if you want her back,"_ that was scrawled in red ink? Coupled with the fact that Emmy's phone was going straight to voicemail, and _no one_ else was freaking answering—why does no one seem to answer in times like these?—their phones?

Peter went straight into a panic.

He realized _later_ on that maybe he should have tried a little harder to contact her, that perhaps he should have made his way straight to the Avengers facility to ask Mr. Stark for advice.

However, with the blood rushing in his ears and the sudden palpitations, the adrenaline filling his body? Rational thought went flying out the window.

Adrenaline makes you do strange things.

All that was running through his mind was the worst possible situation that could be going on. He almost slammed into multiple structures while frantically swinging his way towards the warehouse. Karen was probably— _definitely—_ trying to get him to slow down, to give her more time to try to contact Emmy or Mr. Stark, but his mind was shifted into autopilot.

It was almost comical, how easy it was to stop them. The people that had lured him in with that bait obviously weren't top rate criminals. They were like the poor-man's Vulture. They _wanted_ to steal tech, they wanted his suit and information on getting into the Stark tower—that's how bad they were, really. Their intel must have been coming from a message in a bottle since _all_ the tech had been moved _one fucking year ago—_ to get even more tech.

They were visibly startled when he made his entrance, probably not expecting him to actually show up. But before the smirks could even fully spread across their faces, they were all pretty much out of commission. A punch here, a kick there, a couple of webs and literally 64 seconds and they were all down for the count.

He took in a quick breath to steady himself, before narrowing his eyes at them, the eyes in his suit mirroring the action. "Where is she?"

The man closest to him snarled, not happy at all with the outcome of the situation. "You're going to have to find her, _Spider-Boy_."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Why not?" One of the other men shrugged, looking as nonchalantly as he could while webbed to a pole.

Peter glared at them, then shot a web out to bring himself farther away from them and to a higher vantage point in the building. "Karen, scan the prem—" _**Already did, boss. There's no one here aside from you and those guys.**_

"Are you sure? Can you double check? Maybe they have her somew—" _**I'll go ahead and double check, but just to let you know, Miss Emmy sent you a message approximately 2 minutes ago.**_

"Wh—do you mean?" _**She's at home.**_

Peter wanted to tear his hair out as Karen played the voicemail from Emmy. She had to stay late at school for a sudden instrument lesson, someone asked her to switch because of a family emergency. She just got all of his texts and voicemails because her phone ran out of battery, but she was _home_.

Not that he would have preferred that they'd actually been able to kidnap her, he was extremely relieved that they didn't come into contact with her, but he was almost embarrassed. That he'd been too rash, that he practically gave away the fact that there is someone he'd throw himself into a fight blindly for. That he would now have to definitely call Mr. Stark in and explain how reckless he'd been _and_ ask him for help to make sure that Emmy wasn't somehow in more danger because of him.

Angrily, he swung back onto a metal platform in front of them, the rattling shocking them all. "You didn't have anyone."

"Wow, you got us. We bluffed." From the tone of his voice, Peter felt that if the man's arms were freed, he probably would have slow clapped.

One of the other men shrugged as well as he could lying down on the floor. "We honestly didn't even know she was a girl, we just guessed and hoped it would work."

"Yeah, that picture didn't really reveal much." The man webbed to a pole agreed.

"Where did you get it?"

"Jim over there spotted you swinging and just snapped the pic." Pole man tilted his head towards slow-clap.

"Hey, Jon, how the fuck are you gonna reveal my name like that?"

"Dude."

"God, you're all a mess." Peter groaned, wishing he could melt into the ground. "How in the world did I fall for this?"

"You've gotta stay on your toes, Spider-Boy. Maybe _we_ didn't actually figure out who the chick is, but someone _will._ " Pole man taunted, smirking at him smugly before Peter shot a web out at his face.

* * *

Before calling for the police, he made sure he talked to Tony first. With his head a bit clearer, he actually remembered the functions that Karen had, including the distress signal that would have basically put him straight through to Tony, or at least FRIDAY.

Tony actually came by before the police made it out, interrogating the men and making sure that they didn't know anything of importance. He was updated by Peter in the call after the whole debacle, but he also had the collection of Peter's rambling, panicked voicemails from earlier in the day.

He brought him over to the upstate facility afterwards, wanting a more thorough debrief, as well as so they could make sure the web was clear of unwanted Spidey and Friends information."You know, you always conveniently forget to come to me before acting on things."

"I tried calling you!" Peter argued.

"On my work phone that I _never_ answer. I don't even know where that phone is, to be frank." Tony said flatly.

Peter deflated at those words. "That's fair. I just…"

"Panicked?"

"Yes." He squeaked ashamedly.

Tony sighed, sinking into the armchair across from Peter. "It's okay, you did well today. You've taken on some good precautions to protect Emmy. And May and Ned. I mean _maybe_ you shouldn't have tried to be all cool and swing around town with her..."

Peter gave him a sheepish look at that, "I know better now?"

"I certainly hope so. That being said, she looked like a fur ball in that picture, and in every other one I found, so it's not like anyone would even discover who she was anyway."

"That's good."

"Seriously though, that kid needs to give a master class on keeping shit off the internet. Even her texts don't give away a hint of knowing your secret. Her Facebook doesn't even have a single post with bad poetry or anything!" Tony seemed genuinely amazed at his findings. "Way better than you at this."

Peter nodded and muttered under his breath. "That's for sure."

"Here, you can go ahead and give her this." Tony tossed him a ring, one that was similar in design to the bracelets that he'd given to May and Ned the year prior. They were almost like smart watches, monitoring vitals and could provide other basic information like the weather or the time through voice commands and a hologram, but they also contained a command that could be used as a superhero SOS. "You already know what it is, I'm actually surprised it took you this long to get it for her. This one can put her through to FRIDAY or Karen in emergencies too though."

"Thank you." Peter said bashfully, grateful for the access that he was allowing Emmy. Maybe it wasn't too surprising, considering in the past three months, Tony had seen her both caring for him while he was bleeding out—and being significantly more responsible than him in that situation—and, now, being kinda, sorta threatened by a bunch of criminals. And she was also pretty wonderf— _Oh god, I was about to subconsciously gush about her again. What is happening to me? Maybe I should..._ "Mr. Stark…"

"Yeah, kid?" Tony looked up at him from the little hologram he was tinkering with, amused at the simultaneously blissed out and completely confused expression on his face.

"I…" _like Emmy. I like her, and I think she likes me, but all of this just happened and could be infinitely worse and I honestly don't know what to do._ "Never mind. I'm good."

Tony looked at him blankly, though Peter saw a flash of _something_ cross his face for a fraction of a second. "You sure?"

"Yeah."

* * *

"A ring? What even… What is this for?" Emmy stared at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly open.

Peter blushed at the implication because he totally did just toss her a ring out of the blue as soon as he slipped into her room at midnight. "It's a cautionary thing. You know, a distress signal of sorts. You can also directly get through to Karen using it too."

"Oh, that's cool." Emmy nodded, and he could see the joy that was dancing in her eyes because of the piece of tech. She played around with it for awhile before turning to face him again and tilting her head in question. "Why though?"

Peter stiffened, hoping that the nervousness wouldn't deep into his voice. "Mr. Stark made it for you. May and Ned both have similar tech as well."

"Now that's really awesome!" She beamed at him, and he was honestly surprised he didn't pass out on the spot because _woah. Am I going to feel like this every fucking time she smiles like that?_ "Iron Man made _me_ tech? It's insane that I can even utter that sentence…"

Peter chuckled, nudging her shoulder. "Your fan girl is showing, Em."

"And I am quite proud of it!" Emmy boasted playfully. They both laughed, but a seriousness suddenly crossed Emmy's face as she remembered her initial query. Why now?"

"What do you mean?" Peter's eyes shifted, not meeting hers and he knew it was the wrong move and that it would give him away immediately, but he couldn't stop himself.

"Petey," Emmy stood up from the bed, where she was seated next to him, and moved to stand in front of him with her hands on her hips. "You're hours later than you said you'd be. You obviously saw Mr. Stark today, and that usually means something big happened. And," She paused, and bent down slightly so that their faces were in line with each other. "you haven't been able to look me in the eye since I asked."

"I-Well… Noth—" Peter stuttered, his mind rapidly flying through excuses he could make, before he sighed. "Actually it's pointless to try to hide it, I guess." She smiled at him, glad that he was choosing not to hide things from her. "You know when we went to see the Ball drop?"

She furrowed her eyebrows because that was less than a week ago, so of course she remembered."Yes, on New Year's obvio—oh. Oh no." Her eyes flew wide open and he knew that _she_ _knew_ what he was getting at.

"Yeah," Peter closed his eyes, feeling all the strength leave his soul. "There were some pictures that made it kind of out there."

" _Oh no_."

"And the guys that took it, they… they kind of pretended they kidnapped you."

"What?! Is—today? Did that happen today?"

"Mhmm." He opened his eyes again to look at her pacing across her floor. "They didn't actually take anyone, and they didn't even have a real idea of who was in the photos. They just wanted to lure me out."

"Are you okay? Did you get hurt? What did they want from you?" She sat down next to him again on her bed, her eyes scanning him for any sign of injury.

"I'm fine, Em. They didn't even touch me," He felt both flattered and undeserving of her worries, but managed a shaky smile at her. "They just wanted some information about Stark tech, but they didn't get a thing other than some jail time and a slew of insults from Mr. Stark."

Emmy released a breath of relief. "That's good, I'm glad you're safe."

"I'm sorry that all of this happened, and that I pushed for you to let me take you around as Spider-Man."

"I—it's okay," She took in the words of his apology, frustration building as she truly realized the catalyst of the day's events. "But I told you!"

"I know." He nodded guiltily.

She furrowed her brows at him. "Are you sure there aren't any kind photos out there with my face?"

"Yeah, Mr. Stark even did a sweep to double check."

"That's good." An awkward silence followed, neither of them able to muster the ability to look at each other.

"I'm really _so_ sorry I got you in this situation, Em." Peter blurted out before the silence could drag on any longer. "I can't believe I did something so reckless. So _stupid_." He was just so defeated, because he wasn't supposed to let anything like this happen. It'd only been a few months since he screwed up because he wasn't letting himself rest. He was supposed to be smarter, more thoughtful, more of a _superhero_.

Emmy startled him from his self-deprecation session, unfolding the hand that he hadn't even realized he was clenching into a fist. "Hey now, I know I got a little frazzled for a second there, but I wasn't actually _in_ any situation." She reminded him softly, interlacing her fingers with his.

"But—" He started.

" _Nope,_ " She interrupted, squeezing his hand tightly. "Petey, everything is okay. You see? I'm fine."

"But you _could have_ —"

"But I'm _not_." Emmy said firmly, trying to stop him from falling into the depths of his doubts."You, Mr. Stark, all of us, we're doing all that we can to make sure that we all stay safe."

"I-" Peter sighed, knowing that she wouldn't acquiesce. "I know. It was honestly just so terrifying. What if they really got you, Em?" His voice was almost trembling as he said his worries aloud.

She took her hand out of his to run her fingers through her hair, giving herself a little more time to think of how to respond. "I'm not going to lie to you, it really would be so horrifying if that happened. But things could happen even if you weren't Spider-Man.

"Maybe we shouldn't hang out so m—"

"Peter," Emmy interrupted him, looking straight into his eyes. He held the eye contact with her, but in his peripheral he could see her hand reaching out towards his face, trembling more and more the closer it got, not steadying until it was cradling his jaw. "I'm okay."

 _I_

"We're both okay, and this is not going to be something that is going to come between us." She nodded, though her voice seemed almost far away, like she wasn't just trying to convince him, but also convince herself and the whole universe.

 _Like_

"We're just going to keep being smart about everything. And try to be even safer in the future."

 _Emmy._

"You're _not_ going to lose me." Emmy shakily smiled at him as she said this, before wrapping her arms around his middle and burying herself into his chest.

 _I really like her._

"I'm not going to lose you." She continued as he wound his arms around her, closing his eyes as he inhaled the scent of her hair.

 _But I don't think I should._

"I can't." She whispered into his chest and he swore he could feel his heart shatter because what kind of person would he be if he continued to place this girl, who cares for him so deeply, in danger?

 _I don't know if I can._

* * *

 **a/n:** maybe it's not our fault (그건 아마 우리의 잘못은 아닐 거야) by baek yerin (백예린) is what I listened to while writing this chapter!I'm sorry that it took a bit longer to get these chapters out, but I was, uh, busy graduating from university lol. I'm so very flattered, however, that since the last chapter, this story has surpassed one hundred in both favorites and followers! I never imagined that this story would resonate quite so well, thank you soooo much!

I hope you enjoy these chapters, and please let me know what you think (: Also, if you haven't already read it, I also posted a Peter x OC Endgame oneshot, _meander!_ Happy readings to you all~


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